
Class 

Book.- 



CXffiXRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



The Man Who Dares 

And Other Inspirational Messages 
to Young People 



By 

LEON C. PRINCE 

Professor of History in Dickinson College 



^m^: 



THE ABINGDON PRESS 
NEW YORK CINCINNATI 



<s^''' 



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Copyright, 1920, by 
LEON C. PRINCE 



AL'G -2 1920 
©GLA597125 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Foreword 5 

I. The Man Who Dares 7 

II. Square Pegs in Round Holes 67 

III. The Short Cut 93 

IV. The Quest of Wisdom 115 

V. The American Soldier 141 



3 



■ 




FOREWORD 

The subject matter which forms the con- 
tent of these chapters was originally pre- 
pared for public oral delivery and has been 
repeated before many audiences, composed 
principally of young people, high school and 
college students, covering a wide geographi- 
cal area. The many and earnest assurances 
of inspiration and encouragement derived by 
those who listened to these messages justify 
the hope that the written word may win a 
similarly hospitable reception from the 
largei reading public afforded by the press. 



I 

THE MAN WHO DARES 



A STUDY in the foundations of dominant 
character and manhood as illustrated in the 
careers of those intrepid pioneers in the 
world's thought and action whose achieve- 
ments have created epochs and whose faith, 
persistence, energy, and courage are the 
marks of their axes on the trees in the wilder- 
ness through which they passed that have 
blazed the way for successive generations. 



THE MAN WHO DARES 

The Pioneers 

On the staircase of the National House of 
Representatives there hangs a large painting 
entitled ''Westward the Star of Empire 
Takes Its Course." It portrays an emigrant 
train crossing the Rocky Mountains, a fa- 
miliar incident in American life fifty or 
seventy-five years ago. In the foreground 
are perhaps ten or a dozen men and women, 
on foot, on horseback and in wagons, press- 
ing with eager faces and hurrying feet to the 
top of a hill, whence far below and to the 
westward stretch the rolling prairies, dotted 
with herds of roaming buffalo, while here 
and there an Indian skulks in sullen appre- 
hension of the white man's coming. In the 
background the hardy pioneers are unload- 
ing wagons and pitching tents preparatory 
to camping for the night. High up on a 

9 



THE MAN WHO DARES 

shelving ledge a human figure waves his hat 
in audacious salute to the setting sun, and 
with the other hand plants the stars and 
stripes on the rock-crowned summit of the 
wilderness. To the left a man on horseback, 
clad in hunter's garb and half turning in his 
saddle, points with extended arm to the vast 
plain below, as if beholding in prophetic vis- 
ion the day when fields of waving grain shall 
fill the solitarj^ place and marts of trade rise 
in regions of unbroken solitude. It is the 
preliminary signal for the battle royal be- 
tween man and the forces of nature, and 
man surely shall win. It is the passing of 
yesterday with its primitive quiescent glories 
before the onward irresistible march of to- 
day. 

If you look into those pictured faces, you 
can see something of the rugged strength, 
the mighty resolution, the dauntless enthusi- 
asm, that led these men and women and 
thousands of others like them to brave the 
terrors of the wilderness with its peril of 
savage beasts and still more savage men, to 
fix far off on Western altitudes the beacon- 
light of liberty. Men of determination they 

10 



THE MAN WHO DARES 

were, of lofty and aggressive courage, of iron 
will, superb ideals and unflinching faith, who 

". . . crossed the prairies as of old 
The pilgrims crossed the sea, 
To make the West, as they the East, 
The homestead of the free." 

A few fell by disease or inability to meet 
the hardships of emigration, while the jour- 
ney was yet in its beginning. Many perished 
along the way from privation and exposure 
or by the hand of treacherous foe, and o'er 
their moldering bones the tall trees like 
watchful sentries keep their silent vigil. Still 
others, like the great leader of the Hebrew 
people, lived to catch a distant glimpse of the 
glories of the promised land, but dropped 
before they passed the border, as though the 
same resistless Voice spake to them that 
said to Moses, ''I have caused thee to see it 
with thine eye, but thou shalt not go over 
thither." 

They still sleep where they fell; some 
where the broad Mississippi's sullen roll 
murmurs a requiem to their honor; some 
where the dark Missouri's murky waters 

11 



THE MAN WHO DARES 

move in full cadence of praiseful fame, and 
generations yet unborn shall "glean up their 
scattered ashes into history's golden urn/' 

Great Men 

The picture is a true symbol of life as 
written in history. A few intrepid spirits 
in every age, impatient of conventional 
restraint, ambitious for a wider range of 
knowledge or action, obedient to the 
heavenly vision and therefore fearless of 
failure or defeat, strike out in the 
dark through the wilderness to find a 
promised land. They encounter opposi- 
tion, discouragement, ridicule, hatred, death ; 
but they blaze the way for the Coming Age 
and hew out the paths along which their fel- 
low beings shall hereafter march to easy con- 
quest in the broad glare of day. 

Alfred, the Saxon king, laying amid the 
desolate ruins of Britain the foundations of 
colossal empire; Columbus, sailing through 
the darkness of unknown seas to find an un- 
seen shore; Copernicus and Galileo, fighting 
for the rights of science against a coalition of 
ignorance and power ; John Wesley, rekind- 

12 



THE MAN WHO DARES 

ling on deserted altars the flame of evan- 
gelical truth; Washington, Hamilton, Jef- 
ferson, grasping with prophetic inspiration 
the essential harmony of liberty and law, 
evolving from the chaos of revolution the 
fabric of imperishable government; Abra- 
ham Lincoln, guiding the precarious des- 
tinies of the great republic through the storm 
of civil war, sealing with his life the last full 
measure of devotion, to the end that "this 
nation might have a new birth in freedom, 
and that government of the people, by the 
people, and for the people might not perish 
from the earth." 

These men and others of their kind, 
whether known or unknown, whether cele- 
brated by the tongues of all mankind or 
buried in the lonely silence of forgotten 
tombs ; the men who toil and suffer, and die 
if need be, that a principle may live or an 
idea be carried to achievement; choosing 
rather to be voices crying in the wilderness 
than nameless echoes idly repeating words 
they have not wit to understand — these are 
the world's heroes and truly great men. It 
matters not whether they go to discover a 

13 



THE MAN WHO DARES 

continent, to colonize a wilderness, to found 
an empire, to extend the domain of science, 
to inaugurate a political reform, or to wage 
spiritual warfare against the powers of dark- 
ness. It matters not whether they succeed 
or fail. These are the men who make the his- 
tory that others chronicle, and swing the 
human race a little nearer the ultimate ful- 
fillment of that divine purpose "toward 
which the whole creation moves." 

The Master Spirit 

God gives such men worthy associates, 
but the master spirit is always conspicuous 
above his fellows like the mountain tower- 
ing above the foothills. "Great men," it is 
said, "like birds come in flocks, but one 
stands preeminent as the guide and leader 
of his age." The mountain which catches 
the first gleaming shaft of morning sunlight 
is crowned monarch of the hills, and the rest, 
however lofty, are but his bodyguard. 

There is a specious and familiar doctrine, 
phrased in the flamboyant rhetoric of dema- 
gogy and proclaimed from stump and 
rostrum by mischievous and fluent tongues, 

14 



THE MAN WHO DARES 

to the effect that God speaks through the 
will of the people and the decrees of heaven 
are registered by the majorities of earth. Or, 
as the sententious Latin proverb has it, "Voce 
populi vox Dei' — "The voice of the people 
is the voice of God." 

Vox POPULI 

So far as concerns the political ambitions 
of rival candidates for clerk of the courts or 
town council or State Legislature, or any 
other matter whose determination rests upon 
mere force of numbers, the voice of the peo- 
ple may be for the time being quite as con- 
clusive as though the issue hung upon the 
infallible judgments of "Him who sitteth 
upon the throne of the heavens." But viewed 
from the standpoint of experience, the 
mother of wisdom; measured by those su- 
perior standards of morality and truth re- 
vealed in the unf oldings of history and estab- 
lished by the indisputable logic of events, the 
proposition that the virtue and intelligence 
of mankind find their best expression in the 
verdict of popular majorities is illogical, de- 
lusive, and supremely false. In the realm of 

15 



THE MAN WHO DARES 

material achievement and in the progress of 
moral ideas majorities neither rule nor lead. 
On the contrary, it is universally true that 
there is more heart, more brain, more con- 
science, in the Few than in the Many, 

Diogenes and the Crowd 

It is related of the Greek cynic philoso- 
pher, Diogenes, that he was one day dis- 
coursing on a street corner of Athens with 
great eloquence upon the beauties of virtue 
when, one by one, his auditors began to leave 
him. Whereupon he burst forth into a ribald 
drinking song. Instantly the crowd re- 
turned and stood gaping in delight and won- 
der, while others came to swell the number. 
"Behold," exclaimed Diogenes, ''the assem- 
blage of fools!" That was more than two 
thousand years ago, but if Diogenes were 
living to-day he could no doubt duplicate 
the experience in any community of the civil- 
ized world. It is a great mistake to sup- 
pose that because virtue and intelligence 
inhere to a greater or lesser extent in the 
moral composition of mankind, therefore 
these qualities are mankind's chief staple, or 

16 



THE MAN WHO DARES 

that they motive to any appreciable degree 
the conduct of the vaunted majority. 

The Men Who Have Done Things 

Who have stood for advance — for the 
reformation of false ideals and methods or 
for the conservation of true ones — in society, 
church and state, while the angry waves of 
hostile opinion broke and dashed around 
them like the furious beating of the ocean 
surf against the flint foundations of the ever- 
lasting cliffs? Who laid the Atlantic cable, 
spanned the roaring torrent of Niagara, built 
the transcontinental railroads, whose bands 
of living steel bind the East and the West in 
fraternal embrace, and the rolling thunder 
of whose traffic utters its ceaseless and con- 
vincing answer to all faint-hearted skeptics 
who weakly yield to first discouragement or 
danger and cry, "It can't be done!" Who 
inaugurated and carried out to final and 
glorious success those mighty movements — 
political, scientific, religious — whose hard- 
won victories over the embattled hosts of 
error shall stand as the enduring memorials 
of that fierce determination and intrepidity 

17 



THE MAN WHO DARES 

of soul that have made their authors the con- 
querors of fate? One — two — ^three — four — 
a dozen invincible spirits, who, despite the 
clamofous protest of their fellows, dared 
leave the beaten highway of the commonplace 
and branch out in unexplored fields to chal- 
lenge the dread unknown. 

"Count me o'er earth's chosen heroes — 

they were souls that stood alone, 
While the men they agonized for hurled 

the contumelious stone, 
Stood serene, and down the future saw the 

golden beam incline 
To the side of perfect justice, mastered by 

their faith divine. 
By one man's plain truth to manhood and 

to God's supreme design." 

Wrong-headed Majorities 

Every folly and delusion that have blotted 
the human record, every iniquity that has 
flourished unchecked in the garden of human 
society, have been embraced or sanctioned 
or condoned by a local if not by a universal 
majority. 

"It's the devil sailing up the river with a 
sawmill on a raft!" screamed a pious old far- 

18 



THE MAN WHO DARES 

mer to his wife, when he saw Robert Fulton's 
steamboat, the Clermont, make its initial 
trip from New York to Albany. And he 
turned and ran like a frightened rabbit. His 
yell of terror was echoed by every supersti- 
tious rustic on the banks of the Hudson, who 
mistook the thumping of the engine and 
the wreaths of curling smoke for the palpi- 
tations and sulphurous breath of hell's pre- 
siding genius. 

It was the popular party that hung the 
Salem witches, kindled the fires of a thou- 
sand martyrs, stoned the prophets, and 
crucified the Saviour of the world. But it 
was a French revolutionary mob that reached 
the climax of demented fury when, having 
overthrown the foundations of human gov- 
ernment and order, they turned the puny 
artillery of their wrath against the great God 
of the universe in the impotent but frenzied 
scream, "We must have no monarch in 
heaven if we would have none on earth!" 
And they robed in the vestments of a high 
priestess of religion a common prostitute of 
Paris, and worshiped her as the goddess of 
reason. 

19 



THE MAN WHO DARES 

Testimony of History 

All history shows, if it shows anything at 
all, that human advancement is never a spon- 
taneous process. Men are never converted 
to any genuine reform in society, science, 
religion, morals, or government, in the mass. 
It is always the individual who draws the 
first bead on truth and gets hold of those 
mighty principles and forces which prove the 
levers of succeeding ages. As a usual thing 
he has to face every degree of opposition, 
from harmless ridicule to bitter and malig- 
nant persecution, before he can bring the 
object of his endeavor within the focus of 
his generation ; and even then he rarely suc- 
ceeds. It is hard work educating a genera- 
tion, and the man who attempts it is pretty 
sure to get kicked for his pains while he lives, 
and a prompt and unlamented burial as soon 
as he is dead — sometimes sooner. The world 
has very little use for its missionaries and its 
reformers, its discoverers, inventors and 
pioneers, its Saint Pauls, Savonarolas, 
Columbuses, Cromwells, and Wesleys; very 
little use or sympathy for men with "new 

20 



THE MAN WHO DARES 

empires in their purpose and new eras in 
their brains." Such men rise above the dead 
level of the commonplace and make people 
crane their necks to see "what's doing." 
Ideas disturb the cobwebbed nooks wherein 
mediocrity delights to browse and stagnate, 
and aggressive purposes ruffle the compla- 
cency of self-content. So the world calls 
these disturbers of its slumbers "cranks" and 
"heretics," and then turns over and goes to 
sleep again. But if the heretics refuse to 
silence, or the cranks persist in turning their 
noisy machinery, the world gets up and 
throws stones at them, hangs them on its gib- 
bets, or consigns them with choice profanity 
to the limbo of its contempt and ostracism. 

Popular Idols Are Popular Mirrors 

The true pathfinder is rarely a popular 
idol to his own generation. A popular idol 
is a popular mirror. It is themselves that 
people really adore in their favorites, and 
not the seeming human embodiment of ab- 
stract virtues. Hero worship — contempo- 
rary hero worship, at least — is never be- 
stowed upon personal qualities alone, how- 

21 



k 



THE MAN WHO DARES 

ever grand, magnetic, or noble they may be, 
not even when they are consecrated to the 
pm-est and subhmest aims, but only as they 
serve to express or represent some common 
phase of the public character or aspiration of 
its heart. To become such a demi-god as 
Andrew Jackson, or Henry Clay, or Jeffer- 
son Davis, or Theodore Roosevelt became, 
a man must reflect in his own career and per- 
sonality some ruling sentiment or great com- 
mon passion of his followers. 

"The man is called a fool or knave, 

Or bigot plotting crime. 
Who for the advancement of his race 

Is wiser than his time. 
For him the hemlock shall distil. 

For him the ax be bared, 
For him the scaffold shall be built, 

For him the stake prepared. 
Him shall the scorn and wrath of men 

Pursue with deadly aim. 
And malice, envy, spite, and lies 

Shall desecrate his name." 

Misunderstood Pioneers 

The ignorant Hebrew jrabble clamored 
for the life of Moses, who made a nation out 

22 



THE MAN WHO DARES 

of a race of slaves, because he had led them 
away from the sensuous comforts of Egyp- 
tian servitude. Socrates was a laughingstock 
in the public streets of Athens, and the vir- 
tuous Cato an object of riotous amusement 
to the venal citizens of Rome, who could not 
understand why a statesman should refuse a 
bribe. When George Stephenson proposed 
to draw a train of cars by steam at the rate 
of fourteen miles an hour he was regarded 
as a fit candidate for the madhouse. When 
Fulton proposed to navigate the Hudson 
river on a steamboat his idea was ridiculed 
by men of sense and science as the "silliest 
that ever entered a silly brain." The Wright 
brothers met with the same reception as the 
pioneers of the airplane. William Carey's 
mission to India was publicly denounced in 
the British House of Commons as the "mis- 
sion of a lunatic," and the brilliant Sidney 
Smith characterized the early foreign mis- 
sionaries as "a little detachment of maniacs" 
— a judgment indorsed by pious congrega- 
tions with the added opprobrium that they 
were worthy objects for divine wrath for 
"interfering with God's business." 

23 



THE MAN WHO DARES 

It is one of the most convincing proofs of 
the fundamental grandeur of human nature 
and an unmistakable evidence of its essential 
divinity, that such men, despite the rancor 
of defaming tongues, rise above immediate 
tribulation and pursue with serene and sted- 
fast purpose the undeflecting tenor of their 
way. Like the block of marble under the 
fashioning hand of the sculptor, the mallet 
and the chisel serve only to cut away the 
cumbering weight of matter and release the 
imprisoned deity or hero within. Such men 
can truly sing the song of Michael Angelo — 
"The more the marble wastes, the more the 
statue grows." 

Belated Appreciation 

By and by, perhaps a thousand years after 
they are dead, posterity awakens to the fact 
that these men were ahead of their time ; that 
their own generation was a little too rough 
with them; and forthwith starts a ten-cent 
subscription fund to build its tardy monu- 
ments to their post-mortem glory. 

When the city of Edinburgh built a 
granite memorial to Robert Burns, who dur- 

U 



THE MAN WHO DARES 

ing his short and ill-fated life often lacked 
for food, his aged mother pathetically re- 
marked, ''Bobby asked them for bread, and 
they have given him a stone/'' 

Some one has framed this definition of a 
saint. It is not found in the dictionaries, but 
it is not inferior to the one that is there: 
"Saint — a man with convictions who has been 
dead a hundred years; canonized now; can- 
nonaded then." 

When the first abdominal operation in the 
history of surgery was performed by a coun- 
try doctor down in Kentucky more than a 
century ago, a frenzied mob patrolled the 
house for two hours, ready to lynch the sur- 
geon if the patient died. He heard their 
hoarse, dull murmurings and knew that if 
that woman lost her life his own must pay 
the forfeit. But his nerve never failed nor 
his hand faltered. The patient recovered, 
the abdominal operation became a standard 
achievement of the profession, and to-day 
medical science pays its choicest tribute to 
the man who dared the fury of a mob to blaze 
a path in surgery. 

Persecuted in one age, a succeeding rears 
85 



THE MAX WHO DARES 

the emblems of its love aromid the objects of 
a former hatred like an arch of triumph. 

'*They walk up to Fame as *to a friend. 
Or their own house, which from the 

wrongful heir 
They have wrested ; from the world's hard 

hand and grip. 
Men who, like Death, all bone but all 

unarmed. 
Have taken the giant world by the throat 

and thrown him, 
And made him swear to maintain their 

name and fame 
At peril of his life." 

Those men of old who crossed the prairies 
and felled the forests, who broke the soil of a 
new and perilous land with one hand on the 
rifle and the other on the plow, did not re- 
ceive the credit for valor and sacrifice in 
their own day. Their own generation called 
them fools to leave a civilized and comfort- 
able community and take up their abode with 
wild beasts and wilder men. It was not until 
prosperous cities had laid their pavements 
and reared their towxrs beside the broad 
rivers of the West, and the hum of industry 

26 



THE MAN WHO DARES 

was heard where once the roar of the panther 
and the shrill warwhoop of the savage had 
disturbed the forest echoes; not until a new 
star had been added to the constellated azure 
of the flag, that these men were acclaimed as 
pioneers of civilization and lifted above the 
level of commonplace frontiersmen to the 
heights of romance and hero worship. 

Historic Perspective 

And, now, what is it about these men who 
turn the world upside down when it wants to 
run in a groove, or keep it true to its course 
when it wants to turn summersaults, what is 
it about them that compels our admiration? 
Why is it that men who to their own genera- 
tion were so often the objects of hatred and 
contempt should appear to us in a totally 
different light, as arch types of noble man- 
hood and benefactors of the human race 
worthy of supreme eulogy and emulation? 

If you want to get the full impression of 
a great mountain you will not lie down flat 
on your back at its base and gaze straight 
up at the top. If you do, your vision will be 
so diverted by the proximity of rock and tree, 

27 




THE MAN WHO DARES 

the spread of foliage, the exuberance of 
branch and leaf and tangled vine, that you 
will fail to get an adequate idea of its real 
immensity and beauty. But you must stand 
off in the distance and view it from afar, as 
it towers with imperial dignity above the 
lesser hills of the range, its summit brilliant 
wdth the glory of the morning, or kindled 
into mellow radiance by the dying embers 
of the sunset fires; and then that mountain 
will appear to you in its true relation, as the 
grandest, most majestic object in all the 
realm of external nature. 

So it is with our judgment of men. We 
cannot take a just and proportionate 
measure of our own contemporaries, espe- 
cially when they are great men. We see them 
too often from the purely personal stand- 
point or in the calcium glare that beats upon 
the public stage. Perhaps we slept under 
the same roof or ate from the same board, or 
sold the great man dry goods and groceries. 
We heard him maligned and vilified by rival 
partisans or saw him caricatured as a rascal 
and a thief in newspaper cartoons. And so 
we lost sight of the great ideas for which 

38 



THE MAN WHO DARES 

he stood, and his essential grandeur and 
heroism of soul, in the blur of contemporary 
prejudice or the recollection of personal 
idiosyncrasies and faults. A hero is never 
a hero to his cook or his barber. The barber 
remembers that the hero had to have a shave 
and a haircut like everybody else, and the 
cook recalls that the great man stormed like 
a tempest if things went wrong in the kitchen. 
Frederick the Great, who never flinched in 
the face of crushing military disaster, raved 
with the fury of a madman if his eggs hap- 
pened to be underdone. It simply goes to 
show that you must not get too close to the 
mountain. 

Some one has said: "The minds of men 
whom we see face to face appear to shine 
upon us darkly through the infirmities of a 
mortal frame. Their faculties are touched 
by weariness or pain, or some unhandsome 
passion thrusts its eclipsing shadow between 
us and the light of their genius." 

But wait until they have been dead a hun- 
dred years or so, and their tombstones — if 
they had any — have begun to gather moss. 
Wait until they are removed beyond the 

29 



THE MAN WHO DARES 

adulation of personal followers and the cal- 
umny of foes, and then let posterity size them 
up. There is nothing like posterity — pro- 
vided always you allow it time enough — ^to 
give an honest man his just due and expose 
the hollow pretense of a sham. Then it will 
be seen that these men typify in a very large 
sense certain fundamental quahties of soul 
which are the supreme measure of character 
and manhood; quahties which must inhere 
not only in the pioneer and the reformer but 
in every man whatever his station, the me- 
chanic, the preacher, the lawyer, the teacher, 
the author, the statesman, who hopes to stand 
for anything at all or to leave a name that 
shall outlast the wreath upon his casket ; and 
which in the intensified degree of their pos- 
session gave to those men of whom I have 
been speaking the power to move, quicken 
and transform their own age, and to awaken 
an answering thrill of appreciation and sym- 
pathy in us who read or hear of their strug- 
gles and achievements generations after. 

Tyranny of Tradition 

First of all, as my subject suggests, I want 
30 



I 



THE MAN WHO DARES 

to emphasize the quahties of courage and 
independence. One of the most difficult and 
discouraging forces in all the world which 
the man of courageous heart and independ- 
ent spirit has to encounter is the force of 
tradition; that attitude of mind which looks 
with reverence upon everything that bears 
the stamp of age simply because it is old, and 
resents as sacrilege or vandalism all criticism 
and change. 

The Chinese emperor once said to a fa- 
mous scholar of his realm, "Hung, ninety 
years of philosophy must have taught you 
a great deal. Tell me, what is the chief 
danger to government?" 

''Well, sire," replied Hung, ''it is the rat 
in the statue." 

"Rat in the statue!" exclaimed the Em- 
peror; "why, what on earth is that?" 

"Well, your Majesty," said Hung, "you 
see it is like this: we build statues to the 
memory of our ancestors. They are all of 
wood; they are hollow; and they are painted 
yellow. Now, sire, if a rat gets into the 
center of one of those wooden statues, you 
can't plunge it in water, for that would wash 

31 



THE MAN WHO DARES 

off the face of your ancestor. You can't 
smoke it out, for that would defile the sacred 
image. Therefore, sire, the rat is safe be- 
cause the image is holy/' 

Courage of Conviction 

A thing is not necessarily bad because it 
is new and untried, and it is not necessarily 
true or sacred because it is old and has been 
accepted for centuries. Man is not guilty 
of disrespect to the past because he refuses 
to wear the garments or to follow the customs 
of his ancestors. If some courageous bar- 
barian in the camp of our Teutonic or Celtic 
forbears had not made a break for civiliza- 
tion, we might to-day be drinking the blood 
of our enemies out of their hollowed skulls in 
the wilderness of Scotland or Germany. 

Suppose Columbus had listened to the old 
fogies of his day when they implored him not 
to sail where nobody else had ever gone, pre- 
dicting that if he only sailed far enough he 
would surely fall over the edge of the earth ? 

Suppose Cromwell had modified his views 
and conduct to suit the babbhng sycophants 
who said: "Hands off the sacred person of 

32 



THE MAN WHO DARES 

the sovereign! Respect the divine right of 
royalty! The king can do no wrong!" 

Suppose Washington had sheathed his 
sword and retired to the pleasant shades of 
Mount Vernon in cheerful obedience to those 
timid but well-meaning souls who cautioned, 
''Go slow; don't doubt the wisdom of king or 
Parliament ; and, above all, don't draw your 
sword against the Lord's anointed." 

America would have been discovered just 
the same had Columbus never ventured be- 
yond the Mediterranean, for the reason that 
a brace of continents three thousand miles 
in width and stretching from pole to pole was 
a considerable obstruction in the pathway 
of navigation, and some one was sure to run 
into it sooner or later. Constitutional gov- 
ernment probably would have triumphed 
over the fiction of divine right even without 
Cromwell ; and the thirteen colonies no doubt 
would have separated in the fullness of time 
from the empire of Great Britain had Wash- 
ington remained on the banks of the Potomac 
in mute, inglorious ease. But this is certain 
— ^the men who are rendered forever illus- 
trious by their inseparable connection with 

33 



THE MAN WHO DARES 

these achievements, had they Hstened to the 
shrieking chorus of tradition, would have 
rounded out their days in unheeded obscurity 
and finally would have descended into name- 
less graves, unsung and unlamented. 

The Mission of the "Kicker^'' 

I believe in the God-given mission of the 
pioneer, of the "kicker," if you will; in the 
heaven-born inspiration of the man who be- 
lieves that nothing is so good that it cannot 
be made a great deal better. It may be that 
the kicker himself cannot accomplish that 
result, but that does not disqualify him as 
a critic or as a reformer, and it is no adequate 
reason why he should remain quiet provided 
he has plain horse sense and knows what is 
wrong. 

The editor of a country newspaper in a 
small town came out in one of the weekly 
issues of his sheet with a scathing criticism 
on an amateur minstrel show given by ''home 
talent." The criticism aroused a storm of 
indignant protest. The star performer 
called upon the editor in person and deliv- 
ered a windy tirade which he concluded with 

34 



THE MAN WHO DARES 

the crushing taunt, "Well, it was a blamed 
sight better than you could have done, any- 
how!'' To which the man of the pen calmly 
replied: "I admit it. Your answer is true, 
but irrelevant. Any hen can lay an egg. 
Nevertheless I maintain that I am a better 
judge of eggs than any hen in this State." 

William Ellery Channing has said, ''In- 
timations from our own souls of something 
more perfect than others teach, if faithfully 
followed, give us a consciousness of spiritual 
force and progress never experienced by the 
vulgar of high life or low life who march as 
they are drilled to the step of their times." 

Not All Motion is Forward Motion 

But while it is true that we cannot have 
any great amount of progress without some 
change, it by no means follows that all 
change is progress, or that every curbstone 
agitator or howling dervish who shrieks his 
blasphemies in the yawning ear of ignorance 
is a prophet crying in the wilderness or a 
Daniel come to judgment. The trouble with 
the lime-light reformer is that he is apt to be 
a disgruntled politician out of a job, or a 

35 



THE MAN WHO DARES 

demagogue manufacturing political capital 
out of popular discontent with the high cost 
of living, or a yellow journalist boosting cir- 
culation, or a self -advertising quack vending 
patent nostrums for imaginary ills. Any 
man in the public eye can command a follow- 
ing, no matter who he is or what he says or 
does. The disposition of the human race to 
stand pat in defense of antiquated institu- 
tions and exploded theories is not a bit 
stronger than its impulse to chase phantoms 
and rush headlong after novelties and inno- 
vations. It calls for the same exalted courage 
to resist a majority, stampeded and headed 
for a precipice, as it does to lead a minority 
charging in a forlorn hope against the in- 
trenched and purblind forces of an unrea- 
soning conservatism. 

The ''Instinct of Victory^^ 

The next fundamental quality of the Man 
Who Dares, or group of qualities, for they 
are always found together, is aggressiveness 
of purpose, optimism of view, inflexible will, 
and an unwavering belief in oneself and in 
the limitless possibilities within him; or, as 

36 



THE MAN WHO DARES 

General Sherman called it, "the instinct of 
victory." The man who believes in himself 
expects to win; that is optimism. And the 
dynamic force which keeps him on the track 
and finally lands him a winner at the end of 
the course is the will. The man never yet 
wrote his name upon the memory of his fel- 
lows who lacked either of the essential quali- 
ties of self-confidence and will power. By 
self-confidence, however, is not meant the 
stubborn folly of the vaunting egotist, nor 
the heartless purpose of the man who crushes 
humanity and tenderness under his heel in the 
mad endeavor to reach a selfish goal, but the 
true confidence and the true will, which im- 
pel the man to believe and do because he 
knows that within himself is the God- 
implanted power to break his birth's in- 
vidious bar and be the architect and the 
master of his destiny. 

Man has shown repeatedly that he can 
both master and make circumstances, if he 
will. There is divine power enough resident 
in the soul of man to move the universe and 
bring in the millennium in ten minutes, but 
it takes effort, and men hate effort. They 

37 



THE MAN WHO DARES 

are like the old Yorkshire farmer who when 
asked his politics answered, "Well, you may 
call mine the politics of the wheelbarrow; I 
goes whichever way they shoves me." 

The Line of Least Resistance 

Hmnanity if left to itself moves along the 
line of least resistance. That is the reason 
this old world makes such slow progress, and 
that is why it always waits for the pathfinder 
to blaze the way and build a boulevard, or 
laj^ a concrete sidewalk with a flowered bor- 
der before it will condescend to follow. The 
Ahiiighty has given us arms long enough to 
reach the stars if we will only stretch them 
out. Some men in the world's history have 
believed this, and when their names are called 
you do not have to consult the cyclopaedia 
to know who they are. 

''Sir," said his secretary one day to Mira- 
beau, the great leader of the popular party 
in the early days of the French revolution, 
"what you require is impossible." 

"Impossible!" roared Mirabeau, leaping 
from his chair. "Xever name to me again 
that blockliead of a word!" 

38 



THE MAN WHO DARES 

Napoleon commanded his generals never 
to tell him when a movement he ordered was 
impossible. No man ever yet accomplished 
anything by sitting down and inventing 
reasons why it could not be done. To believe 
a thing is impossible is to make it so. When 
a man chooses to eliminate that word "im- 
possible" from his dictionary as Mirabeau 
and Napoleon did he begins to work 
miracles. 

Superb Persistency of Mohammed 

When Mohammed began to preach his 
new religion proclaiming the unity and sov- 
ereignty of God and the obligations of per- 
sonal morality, his friends remonstrated with 
him. Some ridiculed, others threatened, all 
advised him to stop and warned him of cer- 
tain and irretrievable ruin if he continued 
his mad crusade against the established 
idolatry of Arabia. In all the land there 
were but three persons who believed in his 
mission or who would listen to his exhorta- 
tions; his wife, his nephew, and his slave. 
But great thoughts flooded the soul of Mo- 
hammed, swept the responsive chords of his 

39 



THE MAN WHO DARES 

being with the majestic harmonies of truth; 
and to those who counseled silence he could 
only answer: "No, I am oppressed and sick 
at heart over the false theology and the 
wickedness of this people. There is hut one 
God, and there can be no virtue, no wisdom, 
without the recognition of his sovereign 
power and providence. He alone is reahty, 
he alone is truth!" 

His friends besought him: "See here, 
Mohammed, be sensible. Why quarrel with 
your own interests? Why destroy your 
popularity? You have married a rich wife, 
settle down and spend her money, and cut 
out all this foolishness about there being only 
one God. The idols of our fathers are good 
enough for us. And if, as you tell us, there 
is but one God, let him proclaim that fact 
himself." 

"No," answered Mohammed, "no; idols, 
formulas, temples, traditions, are nothing. 
There is but one God, and man must know 
him and obey his sovereign will." 

Again they came to him, half warning, 
half threatening him : "Mohammed, you are 
stark mad. Either renounce this folly and 

40 



THE MAN WHO DARES 

return to sanity or count us forever against 
you." 

People pointed him out on the streets of 
Mecca. "See," they said, "there goes Mo- 
hammed; he is crazy." 

Others threw stones and cursed him for a 
pestilent rogue. At last his faithful wife 
died. Hated, despised, ridiculed, threatened, 
forsaken, the man stood absolutely alone. 
Forty picked assassins swore to take his life. 
Still he met insult and violence with the 
sublime reiteration, "If the sun stood at 
my right hand, and the moon at my left, 
ordering me to hold my peace, I would still 
declare. There is hut one Godr 

What could they do with a man like that ? 
His unfailing resolution and fierce, fanatical 
zeal carried him on through opposition and 
persecution until at last he saw the day when 
all Arabia acknowledged its sovereign leader. 
Within ten years of the day that marked the 
lowest ebb of his fortunes he had achieved a 
moral and religious revolution among a peo- 
ple sunk in the abysses of crass idolatry, and 
transformed an ignorant degraded people, 
wandering in nomad bands for uncounted 

41 



THE MAN WHO DARES 

centuries over the Arabian deserts, into an 
organized and conquering nation. Westward 
to the Pillars of Hercules swept the empire 
of Mohammed, flowering in a civilization of 
surpassing brilliancy ; eastward to the Bay of 
Bengal where the waters of the Ganges 
mingle with the southern seas, locking within 
the giant horns of its mighty crescent form 
areas and peoples which once had owned the 
sovereign sway of the Pharaohs and the 
Csesars. And to-day from the loyal hearts 
and brazen throats of two hundred millions 
of mankind still peals the Moslem cry, 
''There is hut one God, and Mohammed is 
the prophet of Godr 

Self-evident Sincerity 

And yet they ask if Mohammed and Mira- 
beau and Napoleon were sincere, and men 
have written volumes to show that they were, 
or that they were not. There can be but 
one answer to such a question. Of course 
they were sincere! Nothing in this world 
but an underlying, undying, rock-grounded 
conviction of the righteousness of his cause 
could give a man that iron determination and 



I 



THE MAN WHO DARES 

buoyancy of courage to carry him through 
what these men encountered and overcame. 
They may have adopted unwise and even in- 
consistent measures to meet their ends ; they 
may have been wrong, as doubtless in some 
particulars they were, but at heart they were 
sincere. A dishonest man, a hypocrite or a 
pretender, is never a brave man. Hypo- 
crites and cowards never choose the thorn-set 
path to fame. 

Men Who Refused to Be Discouraged 

When Phillips Brooks was a student at 
the Boston Latin School, before he had fully 
determined what should be his career, his 
teacher said to him one day, "One thing is 
certain, Mr. Brooks, you will never make a 
preacher." 

When Disraeli heard Gladstone's first 
speech in the House of Commons, which 
speech was a flat failure, he said to a member 
of Parliament, "Depend upon it, that young 
man has no future in politics." 

An eminent Roman remarked of Julius 
Csesar, "Whatever may come of that youth, 
he will never make a soldier." 

43 



THE MAN WHO DARES 

The Duke of Alva scoffed at the idea of 
WiUiam the Silent leading a formidable 
army. 

But Julius Csesar became the greatest gen- 
eral of antiquity; Phillips Brooks the fore- 
most preacher of his age ; Gladstone lived to 
overthrow the man who prophesied his fail- 
ure ; while William of Orange was the guid- 
ing genius of the most heroic struggle for 
national independence against overwhelming 
odds in the history of mankind. 

Suppose these men had taken stock in 
themselves at the figures their critics quoted ? 
The general course of events might possibly 
have been the same, but it would have moved 
to vastly slower music, and the world would 
have lacked four superb examples of master 
spirits who proved by their own inspired ca- 
reers that circumstance, difficulty, natural 
impediment, all can be overcome and molded 
into passive obedience at the command of the 
man of supreme purpose. 

"Confidence is conqueror of men, 
Victor both in them and over them. 
The iron will of one stout heart 
Shall make a thousand quail. 
44 



THE MAN WHO DARES 

A feeble dwarf, dauntlessly resolved, 
May turn the tide of battle, 
And rally to a nobler strife 
The giants that have fled." 



Danton^s Miracle of Purpose 

"What do we require in order to win?" 
cried Danton in the French Assembly, when 
France, disordered, divided, without soldiers, 
without generals, stood terror-stricken at the 
hostile approach of eighty thousand Aus- 
trians and Prussians sweeping on toward 
Paris. His own ringing answer was but the 
deathless utterance of that fierce and des- 
perate courage of the Revolution which he 
typified: "To dare, and dare, and dare 
again!" cried Danton. The spirit of his 
brave reply steeled the heart of France with 
stern indomitable resolve. Fourteen repub- 
lican armies sprang like Cadmus's fabled 
warriors from the soil; they hurled their 
invincible columns against the veteran le- 
gions of their foe, who trembled, wavered, 
and then broke and fled in wild retreat before 
the iron purpose and frenzied onslaught of 
Danton's raw recruits. 

45 



THE MAN WHO DARES 

Inherent Power of the Human Spirit 

I am a firm believer in the omnipotence of 
the hmnan spirit. I beheve that any man or 
woman with a fair endowment of native 
abihty, courage, and common sense can over- 
come by sheer force of determination nine 
tenths — ^yes, ninety-nine one-hundredths — of 
what are generally regarded as insurmount- 
able obstacles in the pathway of success by 
the weak-minded and the weak-kneed. And 
the reverse of this is just as true — ^that the 
blighting elements of doubt, distrust, or fear 
will blast the prospects and paralyze the will 
of him within whose faltering heart they find 
their evil lodgment. 

Suicidal Imagination 

There is an old story which they tell in 
Oriental countries of a man journeying who 
met a dark and dread apparition. 

"Who are you?" challenged the traveler. 

"I am the Plague," the specter answered. 

''And where are you going?" 

"I am going to Damascus to kill three 
thousand human beings." 

46 



THE MAN WHO DARES 

Two months later the traveler returning 
met the same apparition at the same place. 
"Ah, false spirit," said he, "wherefore dost 
thou deal with me in lies? Thou didst de- 
clare thou wert going to Damascus to slay 
three thousand, and lo ! thou hast slain thirty 
thousand." 

"Friend," replied the apparition, "be not 
overhasty in thy judgment. / killed but 
three thousand. Fear killed the rest." 

During the siege of Paris in the Franco- 
Prussian war a German soldier in disguise 
was captured within the French lines. He 
was tried as a spy, condemned, and sen- 
tenced to be shot. The regimental surgeon, 
desiring to test by experiment the power of 
the imagination, secured from the colonel an 
order substituting blank cartridges for bul- 
lets. At the appointed hour the condemned 
man was led to the* place of execution and 
there blindfolded, to die, as he supposed. 
The firing squad were drawn up, their rifles 
leveled at the prisoner's breast. At the com- 
mand, "Fire!" there was a flash, an in- 
stantaneous report, and the spy fell dead. 
Not a bullet had touched him. Not a shot 

47 



THE MAX WHO DARES 

had been fired. The man died of an acute 
attack of imagination. 

Importance of Mental Attitude 

We generally find in this world just about 
what we expect. ''As a man thinketh, so is 
he," and the mental attitude determines the 
size of the dividends we will draw on the 
investment of our capital, whether that capi- 
tal is monej^ brains, or character. The man 
who goes through hfe, head up, with faith 
and courage in his heart, and determination 
written on his face, ready to challenge and 
defy every trouble which assails him in his 
path, will find all the good things of life 
fairly tmnbhng over themselves to get to 
him so fast tliat lie cannot get out of their 
way, while the clouds of darkness will scatter 
and dissolve hke mist before a sea-borne gale. 
But the individual who grovels along with 
his eyes on the ground and his feet in a rut, 
afraid to stand up and strike out for himself 
because he does not want to offend his self- 
appointed leader, or fears the danger of 
getting lost from the rest of the herd; who 
trembles with the constant apprehension of 

48 



THE MAN WHO DARES 

germs and microbes — depend upon it, that 
man will keep the track of the commonplace 
as long as he lives, and will eventually die of 
an accumulation of what were once imagin- 
ary ills, but which have become real ones be- 
cause he thought they were. 

The Non-committal Type 

There are millions who will follow to one 
who will lead; millions who will echo to one 
who will speak, A young fellow just grad- 
uated from college landed a job as assistant 
editor of a daily paper in a small town. Be- 
fore he started in, his chief handed him a long 
sheet of printed instructions for his future 
guidance. This is what they said: 

Do not abuse the Democratic party. 

Do not abuse the Republican party. 

Do not abuse any other political party. 

We are neutral on rehgion. 

We are neutral on prohibition. 

Don't write against trusts. 

Don't write against railroads. 

Keep mum on the tariff. 

Don't be for the President or against him. 

Keep silent on the League of Nations. 

Don't criticize any of our business men. 

49 



THE MAN WHO DARES 

Don't criticize our old jail or courthouse. 

Don't knock our street car lines. 

Let the weather alone, whether good or bad. 

Don't have a word to say about our esteemed 
contemporary. 

Don't praise or pitch into anything or any- 
body. 

When the assistant had read this over three 
or four times he went to the boss and said, 
"Excuse me, but is there anything I can 
write about?" 

"Sure," was the reply. "You can tell the 
people that returns to the Agricultural De- 
partment show that this has been the greatest 
year for cabbages for half a century." 

Lots of people belong to that type, and, 
strange to say, they are usually the ones who 
get credit for being what the world calls 
"good men." The popular conception of a 
"good" man, if his lineaments were trans- 
scribed to paper, would look something like 
the current cartoons of "Mister Common 
People." You know the type: a man who 
never gets in anybody's way, who never says 
what people do not like to hear, who always 
thinks and does exactly as other people tell 

60 



THE MAN WHO DARES 

him. If for any reason he is ever compelled 
to say or do anything which might jeopardize 
his somewhat negative popularity, he goes 
about it after the fashion of the minister who 
was ordered by his bishop to preach on the 
subject of "HelL" The parson, not wishing 
to offend the sensibilities of his high-toned 
congregation, mitigated the uncompromising 
doctrine of the Scriptures in this wise: 
"Brethren," said he, with an apologetic drawl 
and a tremor of tone like the gentle purr of 
a pussy-cat — "Brethren, you must repent, as 
it were; and be converted, in a measure; or, 
you will be damned, to some ecctentf^ 

Now, it may be that that preacher and his 
common type and following are all good 
men; but it is a weak, diluted, innocuous sort 
of goodness; not the kind which shapes an 
epoch, molds thought, inspires to action, and 
makes its possessors respected and ad- 
mired even though they are disliked. Such 
persons may be loved, but they are rarely 
held in genuine esteem. There is consider- 
able truth in the remark of the little grand- 
son of Bismarck. He was sitting on the 
Iron Chancellor's knee one day when he sud- 

51 



THE MAN WHO DARES 

denly exclaimed in a burst of admiration, 
"O grandpa, I hope I shall be a great man 
like you when I grow up." 

''Why, my child?" questioned his grand- 
father. 

"Because you are so great, and everybody 
fears you." 

"Wouldn't you rather every one loved 
you?" asked Bismarck. 

The youngster thought a moment and then 
replied, "No, grandpa, I don't believe I 
would. For when people love you, they cheat 
you; but when they fear you, they let you 
cheat them." 

I do not altogether indorse the boy's phil- 
osophy, but it expresses this truth — ^that the 
negative and innocuous qualities generally 
associated with the conventional type of 
goodness are not conducive either to useful- 
ness or respect. There is no dynamic force 
in a piece of putty. 

Individuality of the Anglo-Saxon 

It is an interesting fact and one worth 
thinking about, that you will find these quali- 
ties of personal force, fearlessness, and 

62 



THE MAN WHO DARES 

independence developed to a higher degree 
in the Anglo-Saxon races than in any other 
people that ever wrote themselves into hu- 
man history. The home life, the school life, 
the political conceptions, the social ideals of 
the Anglo-Saxon all encourage the indi- 
vidual to work out his own salvation. 

The Spanish have a national proverb, 
"Rest in health." They live up to the spirit 
of their motto. For three hundred years the 
Spanish have done little but rest- — when they 
were not baiting bulls or burning heretics. 
They were resting when Dewey slipped into 
Manila Bay, and Schley's immortal fleet 
swept down upon them at Santiago. 

But the Turks have a proverb which beats 
the Spaniards. It goes like this: "It is 
better to walk than to run; it is better to 
stand than to walk ; it is better to sit than to 
stand ; it is better to lie down than to sit ; it is 
better to be dead than alive." 

These people would doubtless sympathize 
with the man who, when his house was on fire 
and fast burning to the ground, warmed his 
hands at the blaze and thanked God he did 
not have to split the wood! 

63 



THE MAN WHO DARES 

Contrast the inert and lazy maxims of the 
Spaniard and the Turk with the spirit of 
the Anglo-Saxon proverb, "Heaven helps 
the man who helps himself," and you will 
understand why it is that the moral leader- 
ship of the world lies with the English- 
speaking races. 

When Attila, the "Scourge of God," who 
boasted that the grass never grew where once 
his horse had passed, swept down with his 
savage Huns like a devastating tempest over 
the plains of Italy, he demanded as a ransom 
of the senators of Rome all their gold, their 
jewels, and costly treasure, and the emanci- 
pation of every slave in the empire. 

"What will then be left to us?" wailed the 
degenerate Romans. 

"I leave you your souls/' replied the un- 
lettered barbarian from the north, who had 
learned in his forest home to value the im- 
mortal mind above the baubles of wealth and 
to despise the effeminate herd who esteemed 
only their fortunes and had no respect for 
themselves. But they did nothing with their 
souls, for they had none worthy the name. 
And they lost not only their gold, their 

54 



THE MAN WHO DARES 

jewels, and their slaves, but their rich in- 
heritance of art and letters, of martial con- 
quests and of civil codes, and all that had 
made the boasted glory of the state before 
virtue decayed and genius failed, or Roman 
matrons bred degenerate spawn to profligate 
and worthless sires. 



The Man Who Dares a Man of Ideals 

Then last of all — and if this final thought 
has not already possessed your minds and 
hearts all I have thus far said has failed of its 
single purpose — last of all, I say, the Man 
Who Dares is a man of ideals. He looks 
beyond the despair and darkness of to-day 
and sees something better in store for to- 
morrow; and then with faith and hope and 
determination goes bravely out to transmute 
noble purpose into accomplished fact. 

I know that it is quite the fashion among 
a certain class of men and women of the 
world to sneer at ideals; to flout them with 
derisive jeers as the insubstantial dream of 
unfledged and callow youth, and to prophesy 
with cynical delight that when the high school 
or college graduate gets out into the rough- 

65 



THE MAN WHO DARES 

and-tumble arena of life, where it is "every 
man for himself and the devil take the hind- 
most," he will abandon his ideals as a useless 
encumbrance in the race for wealth or fame. 
The cynics are too frequently right, for that 
is, I regret to say, about the first thing the 
young graduate does after he has rubbed off 
some of the "fuzz" of academic illusion. But 
the fault is not with the ideal — remember 
that. An ideal may be difficult, but it is 
never impossible. The man may be impos- 
sible, but there is no such thing as an un- 
attainable ideal. Now and then you run 
across a man who holds on to his ideals. He 
is called a fanatic, a visionary, a crank, a 
dreamer; but he draws undeveloped forces 
into play, he brings things to pass, and he 
leaves a name for posterity to bless. 

Youth and Age Terms of the Spirit 

Do you know what it is that makes a man 
old? It is not weight of years. It is not 
gray hair or wrinkles, failing sight or halting 
gait. No, a thousand times. No. I can point 
you to many a silver-headed patriarch who 
has all these, yet who is as young as a school- 

56 



THE MAN WHO DARES 

boy. And I can show you many a so-called 
young man, who has not passed his fortieth 
milestone, who has not a sign of physical 
infirmity, but whose sympathies are dried and 
withered, whose heart is dead, blasted by the 
frosts of a premature and spiritual winter. 
The difference between youth and age is 
primarily a difference in the vigor of spirit- 
ual faculties. As men and women journey 
down the vale of life they gather wisdom and 
experience, but as a general rule they lose the 
fire and the high-minded devotion of youth. 
But the man or the woman who with ad- 
vancing years gains the one and preserves 
the other has solved the problem of eternal 
youth. What kept Gladstone and Edward 
Everett Hale, Clara Barton and Julia Ward 
Howe, young at fourscore years and ten? 
It was the persistent retention of the fire and 
zeal of youth. The speeding years served 
only to knit the hearts of these men and 
women closer to the great heart of a common 
humanity and to link their spirits in sympa- 
thetic accord with the aspirations of man- 
kind. 

In the early part of the last century a 
67 



THE MAN WHO DARES 

country boy up in New England was en- 
gaged in the double occupation of doing 
farm chores and setting type in the printing 
office of a village newspaper. But though 
humble his employment, his soul was stirred 
with aspirations of the highest sort. A lover 
of nature, he longed to interpret her mes- 
sages to the toiling crowds. A believer in 
the ultimate triumph of righteousness, truth 
and justice, he witnessed the errors of his 
time and burned to correct them. The rou- 
tine duties of farm and office were faithfully 
performed, but they were not allowed to 
deaden the sensibilities of the soul or to crush 
the heaven-implanted aspirations struggling 
upward through the uncongenial soil of com- 
monplace surroundings. 

"For while he wrought with strenuous will 
The work his hands had found to do, 
He heard the fitful music still 

Of winds that out of dreamland blew. 
The din about him could not drown 
What the strange voices whispered down. 
Along his task field weird processions swept, 
The visionary pomp of stately phantoms 
stepped." 

It was walking under the illuminating 
58 



THE MAN WHO DARES 

guidance of transcendent ideals, his soul 
alert to catch their heavenly summons, ever 
clearer, richer, stronger, as the passing years 
whitened his devoted head, that gave John 
Greenleaf Whittier his inspiration and made 
him the power that he was. 

The Crowning Quality 

And so I say the Man Who Dares is the 
man who, like the poet, holds fast the glow- 
ing ideals of his youth; holds them with a 
purpose unwavering and true, and a faith 
that burns the brighter unto the coming day ; 
holds them through the heat and turmoil of 
the strife with a courage to believe that 
''Though the cause of Evil prosper, yet 'tis 
Truth alone is strong" ; holds them until the 
radiant skies of morning become the mellow 
afterglow that gilds the evening of his days. 
The homely setting of his life may lack the 
gleam of old-time romantic fire ; his may not 
be the laurel wreath that crowns the son of 
fame. Yet is he none the less a hero, though 
"Memory o'er their tomb no trophies raise," 
nor "pealing anthem swells the note of 
praise." 

69 



THE MAN WHO DARES 

I began this chapter with an illustration 
suggested by a mural decoration in the Capi- 
tol at Washington. Let me conclude with 
an incident drawn from a political drama 
enacted there half a century ago. 

The Heroic Story of Senator Ross 
In 1868, w*hen sectional bitterness and 
partisan strife ran high in the fierce finale of 
the war, the President of the United States 
was impeached for high crimes and misde- 
meanors and placed on trial at the bar of a 
hostile Senate which had already prejudged 
the case and was determined to destroy the 
man who had dared to block the revengful 
schemes of a majority, drunk with power 
and glutted with the spoils of conquest. The 
whole country, inflamed with the angry pas- 
sions of the hour, united in one savage clamor 
for the political head of Andrew Johnson. 

Momentous Import of the Case 
The trial neared its crisis. The decision, 
whatever it might be, would be sure to be- 
come a precedent in the American govern- 
ment for generations to come, for weal or for 
woe. A dense and eager concourse packed 

60 



THE MAN WHO DARES 

the Senate Chamber; members of foreign 
legations, ladies of rank, judges, congress- 
men, generals of the army, men of world- 
wide fame, awaiting with strained faces the 
unprecedented scene about to transpire. 
Outside surged a restless multitude, unable 
to gain admittance. Telegraph operators sat 
in their places ready to flash the news to dis- 
tant cities, towns, and raiboad stations where 
eager throngs were gathered to hear the ver- 
dict of the Senate. 

Doubt of the Result 

It required two thirds of the fifty-four 
senators to convict. Amid a silence painful 
in its tense and bated stillness the balloting 
began. The minority which had no quarrel 
with the President voted unanimously for ac- 
quittal; but only ten of the senators belonged 
to the minority party. Of the majority most 
had already filed their opinions, and it was 
known how they would vote. Seven only 
were doubtful. The press of the country, an- 
ticipating their probable action, had heaped 
upon these seven men every form of abuse 
and vituperation to influence their decision. 

61 



THE MAN WHO DARES 

A Hard Choice 

Among the seven was a young man of a 
type too rare in political life. In the flush of 
early maturity he stood at the threshold of 
what gave every promise of being a long and 
distinguished career. Ambitious, able, popu- 
lar, successful, the young man stood at the 
parting of the ways. If he voted for con- 
viction, his future was assured ; for his State, 
the most radical in the Union and the most 
clamorous for the degradation of the Presi- 
dent, would reward the young statesman 
with the continuance of its favor. If he 
voted for acquittal, that same constituency, 
implacable in its fierce resentment, would 
hurl him from his proud position and brand 
his name with infamy. No man in public 
life ever faced a harder choice. The ballot- 
ing continued and reached the young man's 
name. 

"Edmund G. Ross,'' called the clerk of the 
Senate. And amid the breathless silence of 
a nation, in defiance of every threat, and in 
the certain knowledge of his doom, Senator 
Ross pronounced the words — ''Not guilty I" 

62 



THE MAN WHO DARES 

Persecution and Abuse 

The storm of malediction that beat upon 
the heads of these seven devoted patriots was 
unparalleled for violence and fury in the 
history of the republic. Every one of them 
was defeated for reelection to the Senate. 
The House of Representatives appointed a 
committee to investigate the charges of cor- 
ruption that were hurled against them. They 
were pilloried as traitors to their party and as 
enemies to their country, and threatened with 
a "gibbet of everlasting obloquy." But the 
fate of Senator Ross was the hardest of all. 
The others were men advanced in years and 
near the end of their careers. He was only 
at the beginning of his; young, ambitious, 
capable, he would never have another chance. 
The others were men of long experience in 
public life, accustomed to its storm and 
stress, able to withstand its pressure. He 
was new in the service of the nation, and it 
might never be known whether he had acted 
from conviction or had bartered his vote for 
money. The constituencies of the others 
were of the older and more stable sections of 

63 



THE MAN WHO DARES 

the country, whose natural conservatism 
would in time insure their vindication. His 
was the rabid and implacable West whose 
verdict, delivered in passion, would crys- 
tallize into irrevocable fate. 

Perpetuated Injustice 

From the Senate Chamber, which he had 
entered in the high expectancy of youthful 
hope, Edmund G. Ross passed in the blight 
of his ambition but with a stainless conscience 
to unmerited oblivion, and died forty years 
after in exile and neglect. Nor has a later 
generation yet decreed the tardy justice that 
comes with cooling passions. For when the 
opportunity came to the State of Kansas to 
place in Statuary Hall the sculptured effigy 
of a citizen of the commonwealth worthy to 
stand with the noblest of the land — with 
Washington and Lincoln; with Roger Wil- 
liams, of Rhode Island; Samuel Adams, of 
Massachusetts ; and Robert Fulton, of Penn- 
sylvania, as exemplars of civic virtue and pos- 
sessions of civic pride — the State of Kansas 
turned with averted face from the bravest of 
her sons and voted to erect in the nation's 

64 



THE MAN WHO DARES 

pantheon the statue of another son who had 
hkewise worn the senatorial toga — a coiner 
of phrases and a rhetorician — the crowning 
act of whose career was to report for the 
most sensational of New York newspapers 
the ghastly details of a prize fight in Carson 
City, and who made his valedictory address 
to the American people through the sporting 
columns of a yellow journal. 

"The VANauisHED" 

"I sing the hymn of the conquered who fell in the 

battle of life— 
The hymn of the wounded, the beaten, who died 

o'erwhelmed in the strife. 
Not the jubilant song of the victors, for whom 

the resounding acclaim 
Of nations was lifted in chorus, whose brows 

wore the chaplet of fame. 
But the hymn of the low and the humble, the 

weary, the broken in heart. 
Who strove and who failed, acting bravely a 

silent and desperate part; 
Whose youth bore no flowers on its branches, 

whose hope burned in ashes away; 
From whose hand slipped the prize they had 

grasped at, who stood at the dying of day 
With the wreck of their life all around them, 

unheeded, unpitied, alone — 
65 



THE MAN WHO DARES 

With death swooping down o'er their failure 
and all but theii faith overthrown. 

While the voice of the world shouts its chorus, 
its paean for those who have won; 

While the trumpet is sounding triumphant, and 
high to the breeze and the sun 

Gay banners are waving, hands clapping, and 
hurrying feet. 

Thronging after the laurel-crowned victors, I 
stand on the field of defeat, 

In the shadow, 'mongst those who are fallen, and 
wounded and dying, and there 

Chant a requiem low, place my hand on their 
pain-knotted brows, breathe a prayer. 

Hold the hand that is helpless, and whisper, 
'They only the victory win 

Who have fought the good fight and have van- 
quished the demon that tempts us within ; 

Who have held to their faith unseduced by the 
prize that the world holds on high ; 

Who have dared for a high cause to suffer, re- 
sist, fight — if need be, to die. 

Speak, History! Who are life's victors.'^ Un- 
roll thy long annals and say. 

Are they those whom the world called victors, 
who won the success of a day? 

The martyrs of Nero? The Spartans who fell 
at Thermopylae's tryst, 

Or the Perians and Xerxes? His judges or So- 
crates? Pilate— or Christ?'" 

66 



II 

SQUARE PEGS IN ROUND HOLES 



J 



An endeavor to help place the young men 
or women who have not yet "found" them- 
selves; who stand at the threshold of life's 
day with plans uncertain or possibly miscon- 
ceived. 



II 

SQUARE PEGS IN ROUND HOLES 

An artist who painted portraits for a 
living was doing a piece of work in Bristol, 
England, in the year 1757. A small boy, 
five years old, looked on with curious inter- 
est. The artist to please the child said to 
him, "My little fellow, I will paint you a 
picture; what shall it be?" 

"Paint me an angel," said the child, with 
flashing eyes. "Paint me an angel with 
wings, and a trumpet to sound my name over 
the earth." 

The lad was Thomas Chatterton, Eng- 
land's "marvelous boy poet." His precocious 
answer was prophetic of the sad career whose 
consuming motive was ambition, and whose 
melancholy end was suicide at the age of 
seventeen. 

Castles in Cloudland 

The average boy looks for the angel and 
69 



THE MAN WHO DARES 

listens for the trumpet peal. In the roseate 
dreams of enthusiastic youth he sees himself 
throned on the pinnacle of renown, the ap- 
plause of an admiring world ringing in his 
ears. 

The romantic maiden of *'sweet sixteen" 
with literary or histrionic aspirations pines 
for the day when she will be a great novelist 
or a queen of tragedy, or a star of the 
moving-picture screen, with a fame as wide 
as her hopes are measureless. Or perhaps 
her longings are for wealth without the labor 
of earning it ; then she would be the idolized 
wife of a multimillionaire, with silks and 
satins and diamonds to adorn her person and 
the votaries of fashion to kneel at her feet. 
If she is already an heiress, she covets a for- 
eign title, and would exchange a portion of 
her father's millions for some forlorn and 
bankrupt relic of departed feudal grandeur, 
and live in a magnificent castle and wear a 
coronet — an aspiration not wholly discour- 
aged by the spectacular example of many 
American daughters. 

The consecrated young preacher, fresh 
from the seminary, expects to rival or 

70 



SQUARE PEGS IN ROUND HOLES 

surpass in eloquence and pulpit power a 
Beecher, a Brooks, or a Billy Sunday. 

The young graduate in law just admitted 
to the bar expects to become in due time the 
peer of a Joseph H. Choate or Elihu Root. 
Or, if he is squinting at politics, he will 
parallel the achievements of a Roosevelt or 
the masterful domination of a Wilson. 

While of all those who enter the ranks of 
industry and commerce, few hope to die 
worth less than a Carnegie, Rockefeller or 
Ford. 

Without doubt these or similar delightful 
visions loom large and real on the horizons 
of some who read these pages, even as they 
have inspired the dreams of youth these 
many centuries, since Ambition first breathed 
beguiling whispers or Hope chanted her 
witching melodies in the longing soul of 
man. 

Legend of the Sieur Champlain 

The old Indian traditions of New Eng- 
land tell us that somewhere on the banks of 
the Penobscot River there is an enchanted 
city, called in the mellifluent Indian tongue, 

71 



THE MAN WHO DARES 

Norumbega. Its real and tangible existence 
was believed in by the early discoverers, and 
was even located with mathematical precision 
upon their maps and charts. Some among 
them even claimed to have caught fleeting 
glimpses of its magic splendors reflected in 
the sunset skies as they skirted the coast or 
idly swung at anchor in some sequestered 
bay. 

One summer day about three hundred 
years ago the French explorer, Champlain, 
sailed up the Penobscot river in quest of 
more territorial gems to add to the already 
resplendent diadem of Henry the Fourth. 
The day was drawing to a close, and as the 
sun sank to rest behind the glowing horizon 
suddenly there were revealed to the wonder- 
ing eyes of Champlain and his crew the out- 
lines of the enchanted city. There it stood in 
the soft and mellow light, its golden walls 
magnificent and vast, its streets paved with 
ivory, while the fast-sinking sun from below 
the western hills threw its rays aslant the 
gilded domes and spires ; and the magic charm 
of the picture was further enhanced by the 
wild beauty of the surrounding scenery. The 

72 



SQUARE PEGS IN ROUND HOLES 

crew of the vessel lapsed into wondering 
silence, while Champlain gazed in speechless 
ecstasy at the surpassing splendor of this 
unknown citj^ throned in the midst of un- 
explored wilderness. He even fancied he 
heard cathedral bells chime heavenly music, 
as though summoning to religious worship 
or celebrating some glad and happy event. 
Impelled by a frenzied desire to moor his 
vessel under the city walls before the fall of 
night and take possession of its hidden treas- 
ures in the name of the King of France, 
Champlain ordered every stitch of canvas 
flung to the breeze and the sailors to man the 
galley oars. 

But as the vessel approached the shore the 
city fled — a shadow or a dream. Its palaces 
and temples became only banks of purple 
cloud touched by the waning sunlight; its 
lofty and majestic spires only the branchless 
pines that cut the evening sky; its stately 
walls but the rocky cliffs at the distant bend 
of the river; the ravishing strains of unseen 
choirs proved but the empty illusion of an 
overwrought fancy, for the forest depths 
gave forth no sound save the lonely cry of 

73 



THE MAN WHO DARES 

the whip-poor-will and the dismal hoot of the 
owl. 

Disillusionment 

So the gilded air castles built by enthusi- 
astic youth too soon dissolve into the wreck 
of unfulfilled ambitions and shattered hopes. 

The optimistic candidate for the late 
J. Pierrepont Morgan's shoes, whose master 
genius was to win for him commanding place 
in the empire of finance, at length settles 
down to the routine of trade in a country 
village, marries a wife, rears a family, and 
forgets his early visions of colossal fortune 
in the daily and absorbing purpose to make 
both ends ''meet," and finally compromises 
the situation by making one ''end" vegetables 
and soup. 

The young barrister whose modest soul 
aspired to million-dollar counsel fees and 
high judicial honors, hangs out his shingle 
in a back alley of the county seat, and con- 
centrates those vaunted talents, which in 
some imaginary arena of legal debate were 
to have electrified the world, upon the incon- 
spicuous but difficult job of keeping his 

74 



SQUARE PEGS IN ROUND HOLES 

chicken-stealing, wife-beating clients out of 
the county jail. 

The zealous young theologue who fondly 
dreamed of a city church and a crowded 
auditorium, finds himself after twenty years 
in the ministry located in some obscure coun- 
try parish, confronting the imminent and 
persistent problem how to support and edu- 
cate a family of eight children on a salary 
of a thousand dollars and a garden patch in 
the backyard. 

About the only one in the lot who really 
comes out with a net profit is the romantic 
maiden of ''sweet sixteen," who forgets all 
about writing novels and marrying grand 
dukes, and becomes the capable and con- 
tented wife of a sturdy American citizen, 
the uncrowned queen of the kingdom of 
home. 

Why? 

Now, since this is the common lot and ex- 
perience of the great majority of human 
kind, the question naturally arises. Why 
after constructing these exquisite architec- 
tural fabrics of the fancy do they so soon 

75 



THE MAN WHO DARES 

vanish from our sight ? Why are we not per- 
mitted to fill them and thrill them with the 
life and warmth of our own being and make 
them what we would have them to be — reali- 
ties ? Why is it that ambition and realization 
are so often two parallel lines, destined 
never to meet ? 

Some Things We Cannot Help^ and 
Some We Can 

The impediments to the successful accom- 
plishment of our plans and purposes are of 
two kinds. The first is what for the lack of 
a better term we may call natural limitations. 
This consideration we may dismiss in few 
words, because while it no doubt plays a cer- 
tain inevitable part in shaping human des- 
tinies, it is not a helpful factor to dwell on 
the negative side of things. Xo man ever 
yet accomplished anything by sitting down 
and inventing reasons why it cannot be done. 
To believe a thing is impossible is to make it 
so. But there are, of course, certain bounds 
to all human endeavor prescribed by the very 
laws of being beyond which no man can 
pass. There is, for example, a limit to hu- 

76 



SQUARE PEGS IN ROUND HOLES 

man endurance both of body and of mind. 
Both, as we all know, are capable of vast 
and wonderful development and exertion, 
but you cannot overtax the powers of either 
without destroying the efficiency of those 
very instruments upon which depends the 
successful performance of your mission or 
your task. 

Then, too, there are enormous differences 
in human ability. All the education in the 
world never will put brains into an empty 
skull. Education will cultivate and teach 
you how to use the brains you have, but it 
will not put brains in your head if they are 
not already there. 

But all that aside, the main reason for 
failure or success lies within the voluntary 
and sure control of the man himself. Broadly 
speaking, every man is the architect and the 
master of his own destiny, and many a poor 
disgruntled soul who curses fate or growls 
at Providence because of his hard luck or his 
disappointments has but himself to blame. 
All genuine and worthy effort ought to and 
will succeed, but all success must be won 
along some definite and eligible line, and it is 

77 



THE MAN WHO DARES 

right at this point that so many make the 
gravest mistake. 

Self-Knowledge Indispensable 

"Know thyself," was the inscription carved 
over the doorway of a pagan temple. Man 
is more deficient in self-knowledge than in 
almost any other kind of knowledge. Not 
that men and women do not think about 
themselves, for most of us seem to think of 
little else. But we think of what we shall 
have, what we shall get, how we shall appear, 
what we shall do, now and then, perhaps, 
what we shall be, but rarely if ever what we 
are. Man has made a specialty of biological 
science; that is, he has studied the evolution 
of his physical structure, and proclaims with 
apparent pride in his family tree that the 
tadpole was his grandfather and his eldest 
brother is the anthropoid ape. But of his 
real inner self, the spiritual offspring of di- 
vinity, to whom was promised the plenitude 
of dominion and power, man knows but little. 
And so he finds himself a square peg in a 
round hole because he failed to master the 
secrets of his own personality and made the 

78 



SQUARE PEGS IN ROUND HOLES 

weightiest decisions of his hf e in the folly of 
conceit and ignorance. 

A member of the Ohio State Legislature, 
in addressing that body, divided mankind 
into four classes: 

First, those who do not know, and who 
do not know that they do not know. These 
are fools ; leave them. 

Second, those who do not know and know 
that they do not know. These are children ; 
teach them. 

Third, those who know but do not know 
that they know. These are asleep; wake 
them. 

Fourth, those who know and know that 
they know. These are wise men; follow 
them. 

The wise man is the man who knows him- 
self. By self-knowledge I mean that wisdom 
that enables a man to recognize and correctly 
understand his own personal qualities pe- 
culiar to himself. This knowledge of one- 
self, his endowments, his powers, and capa- 
bilities, is the foundation of the highest suc- 
cess. Dean Swift once said, ''No man ever 
made an ill figure in life who understood his 

79 



THE MAN WHO DARES 

own talents, nor a good one who mistook 
them." Call it genius, talent, whatever you 
will, there is to a greater or lesser extent in 
each one of us a certain predilection or apti- 
tude for some particular department or 
sphere of activity. Carlyle said, ''The utter- 
ance of one's instinct is truer than one's 
thought." This instinct often reveals itself 
very early in life if we were only sharp 
enough to discern it. 

Unusual Precocity 

The hymnwriter Isaac Watts while a mere 
child exhibited a marked talent for making 
verses. His father deprecated this tendency 
and did his best to eradicate it from his son's 
nature, but without success. One day, becom- 
ing unusually exasperated at being contin- 
ually questioned, answered, and addressed in 
verse, he told Isaac that the next time he was 
guilty of making a rhyme he would punish 
him after the approved and orthodox fash- 
ion which was quite devoid of poetry. It 
was not long before the youth repeated the 
offense and the irate sire prepared to keep 
his word. The avenging rod was about to 

80 



SQUARE PEGS IN ROUND HOLES 

descend when young Isaac fell upon his 
knees and supplicated his father thus : 

"Dear father, on me mercy take. 
And I will no more verses make !" 

The old gentleman was completely non- 
plussed, biit decided to let the boy follow 
the bent of his own genius. Isaac Watts's 
sermons would put a modern congregation to 
sleep in ten minutes, but his glorious hymns 
will live in the hearts of Christian people as 
long as the church shall stand. 

The boy Michael Angelo, turning with 
equal disgust from the tasks of the school- 
room and the sports of the playground, to 
copy with marvelous skill and accuracy the 
drawings of great artists, then and there 
foreshadowed the coming master whose 
touch made canvas speak and dull, cold 
marble thrill with life and beauty. 

The boy Napoleon Bonaparte, studying 
the lives and campaigns of famous soldiers 
and then storming the snow forts of his com- 
panions at the military school of Brienne, 
was the unfailing prophecy of the victor of 
Marengo and Austerlitz, the tread of whose 

81 



THE MAN WHO DARES 

conquering legions caused kings and empe- 
rors to tremble on their thrones. 

Now, talent is not always thus early de- 
veloped. Nevertheless, every one of us has 
been endowed with some special and original 
power which fits him for a life of usefulness 
and honor, though not necessarily of popular 
renown. It is the duty that every man 
owes not only to himself but to God and the 
world to find out this talent and properly 
develop it. 

Too many people are attracted in their 
selection of a lifework by the glamour of 
place and title. They are victims of that 
delusion, so false and mischievous and yet so 
prevalent, that in order to become somebody 
in the world they must get into the lime-light 
of publicity. 

Misfits 

This insane notion that place and title 
irrespective of character and fitness add dig- 
nity and worth is one of the most obstinate 
and pernicious delusions that ever sprang 
from the prolific root of human vanity. It 
robs honest manual labor of its stalwart arm ; 

82 



SQUARE PEGS IN ROUND HOLES 

it leaves the soil unturned, the bench vacant, 
the spindle idle; it divorces learning from 
labor, unfits men for the ordinary pursuits 
of life, breeds discontent in the hearts of 
youth whose lot is cast in humble places, and 
impels men of small powers into high public 
station. The universal greed for political 
office is but an indication of this consuming 
appetite for distinction. Men abandon hon- 
est and lucrative positions and subject them- 
selves to the meanest humiliation simply to 
get their names into print and achieve a little 
official importance. One of the best things 
Grover Cleveland ever did was to turn his 
back and lock his door against the bellowing 
horde of office-seekers that infest Washing- 
ton at the beginning of every Presidential 
term like the plague of lice and frogs which 
afflicted ancient Egypt. 

It is this idea that is still flooding the so- 
called "learned professions" with fourth-rate 
men. Despite the multiplication of new and 
remunerative employments the law, the min- 
istry and medicine are as overcrowded as 
ever ; and yet unqualified and impossible men 
rush by thousands every year into profes- 

83 



THE MAX WHO DARES 

sional fields abeady congested with dead 
wood and waste material. 

A mother who was ambitious that her son 
should become a head-liner in the world 
brought him to the famous Rowland Hill to 
be examined with a view to the ministry. She 
assured Mr. Hill that her bov had talent, 
though it might be WTapped up in a napkin. 
After a thorough examination the distin- 
guished preacher returned the youth to his 
mother remarking, ''Madam, I have shaken 
the napkin, but there is nothing in it." 

Another well-known clerg^mian observed 
to a young man, weak in intellect but strong 
in conceit, who had the idea that the glory 
of God depended on his preaching the gos- 
pel: 'My young friend, a man may glorify 
God making broom handles. You make ex- 
cellent broom handles; stick to vour trade 
and glorify God by your faithful toil." 

Every Max ix His Place 

More success, satisfaction, and honor will 
come to that man or woman who does well 
and faithfully the humble and inconspicuous 
tasks of life than to one who poorly dis- 

84 



SQUARE PEGS IN ROUND HOLES 

charges the duties of a so-called "higher 
sphere" for which he is unfitted. Many a 
good carpenter has been spoiled to make an 
indifferent lawyer. The world needs good 
carpenters and skilled mechanics and intelli- 
gent farmers far more than it needs quib- 
bling attorneys or grafting politicians. Jesus 
Christ himself worked with his hands for a 
day's wage, and by superb example forever 
sanctified human toil and blessed the imple- 
ments of labor. 

We cannot all design the bridge or the 
temple. Some must quarry the stone and 
weld the iron. We cannot all write the poem 
or edit the journal. Some must make the 
paper, gather the news, set the type, market 
the product. All useful work is honorable 
work, because all useful work is dignified 
and idealized by the accomplishment of 
human service. This is democracy, this is 
Christianity. The poet Lowell has said: 

"No man is born into the world whose 
work is not born with him; there is always 
work, and tools to work withal, for those 
who will ; and blessed are the horny hands of 
toil." 

85 



THE MAX WHO DARES 

Do not get the impression that I am ex- 
horting you to enter the trades rather than 
the professions, or that I am advising you not 
to become doctors or lawyers or preachers. 
Heaven knows the world needs competent 
physicians and holiest lawyers and conse- 
crated preachers. But what I am trying to 
say to you is simply this : study yourselves ; 
find out so far as you can for what particular 
purpose you were intended, for what you are 
adapted. Get rid of the false and abom- 
inable notion that in order to achieve success 
you must work with your heads and not with 
your hands. And then, whatever you do, 
whether you preach the gospel, practice law, 
construct railroads and bridges, build houses, 
or till the soil, go in for all you are worth, 
and go in to win! 

"Life is an arrow — therefore you must know 
What mark to aim at, how^ to use the bow ; 
Then draw it to the head, and let it go." 

The Poor Boy's Chance 

This is the age of the young man. Despite 
the dismal prophecies of those who bewail 
and cry the economic changes of the time, 

86 



SQUARE PEGS IN ROUND HOLES 

and bitterly assert that the trusts and cor- 
porations have preempted every field of en- 
deavor and forever closed the door of oppor- 
tunity in the face of the poor boy, there never 
was a time when the door of opportunity 
stood so wide open for the poor boy as it does 
to-day, nor a time when honesty and thrift 
were so richly rewarded. Almost every one 
of the presidents, managers and magnates 
of these self-same trusts and corporations 
began his own distinguished career at the 
foot of the industrial ladder, and by dili- 
gence, by perseverance, by unremitting ap- 
plication and conscientious indefatigable toil, 
he climbed — not jumped — step bj^ step to the 
top. Where the rich boy has one chance to 
succeed, the poor boy has a hundred. Why? 
For the simple reason that wealth and lux- 
ury react upon the moral fiber of the soul, 
and the young man brought up in that 
atmosphere and environment — unless his 
parents are wiser and saner than rich parents 
usually are — is unfitted for competitive 
struggle because he has never known the iron 
discipline of necessity nor proved his mettle 
by the stern compulsion of self -r chance, 

87 



THE MAN WHO DARES 

''Pull" may put the boy of superior social 
position or influential connections into a good 
job, but it will not keep him there. What the 
directors and the stockholders want is a man 
who can dehver the goods, and not a parlor 
ornament or a distinguished patronymic. 

Will College Education Help? 

Without constructing an elaborate argu- 
ment to show why a young man ought to go 
to college, there is no denying the fact that 
for the young man with the requisite mental 
equipment a college education is an excellent 
preparation for hfe. Preparation means 
power, and we need all the power we can 
get. Four years in college often will bring 
out those latent qualities or hidden aptitudes 
which are not always revealed as early or as 
conclusively as they were to Isaac Watts, and 
so help one to attain that self-knowledge 
which is the foundation of success. It takes 
a long time to become thoroughly acquainted 
with oneself. In college the faculties have 
a chance to ripen and expand in an atmos- 
phere that is favorable to self -discovery and 
stimulating to the higher aspirations. 

88 



SQUARE PEGS IN ROUND HOLES 

Now, while, of course, it would be too 
much to affirm that a college education is 
essential to success, let me call your attention 
to a very significant fact which will show 
that it has at least a bearing on success. In 
the history of this country only one man in 
seven hundred and fifty has been a college 
graduate; and yet this tiny minority has 
furnished fifty per cent of United States 
senators and representatives and seventy- 
five per cent of the judges of the Supreme 
Court. Eighty per cent of the names con- 
tained in the latest edition of Who's Who 
in America are written in college diplomas, 
and seventeen out of the twenty-seven Presi- 
dents of the United States have been college 
bred. Even in business, where the practical 
or utilitarian advantages of academic educa- 
tion are less obvious than in the professions, 
the captains of industry and finance, or most 
of them at least, will advise the young man 
bent on a business career to go to college if 
he can — and he can if he will. For here 
again the poor boy need never fear the handi- 
cap of poverty. He can go to college as well 
as his wealthy schoolmate, and he will prob- 

89 



THE MAN WHO DARES 

ably get vastly more out of it, for he will 
have less money to waste and less time to 
loaf. 

The Great Achievement 

But I should feel self-condemned and 
gravely at fault were I to stop with the mere 
enumeration of the factors and conditions of 
material success. It is one thing to achieve 
wealth in the marts of trade or distinction 
in professional practice, but it is a very dif- 
ferent and a vastly harder thing to win that 
success in life which will merit the supreme 
and final plaudit, ''Well done, good and 
faithful servant." There are many dismal 
failures in apparently brilliant success, as the 
world defines success, and many a bright 
immortal triumph in seemingly hopeless fail- 
ure as the world counts failure. The greatest 
thing in all the universe of God is a human 
character, because it is the only thing God 
himself cannot make or mold without the 
free cooperation of the willing spirit. Fame, 
wealth, or power affords no just criterion by 
which to take the measure of the man. It 
is not what we do, it is still less what we 

90 



SQUARE PEGS IN ROUND HOLES 

have, it is solely and wholly what we are, 
that stamps our lives with the label of fail- 
ure or success ; and what we are is determined 
by the purposes, the motives and the ideals 
which we permit to rule and actuate our daily 
conduct. And so the man of humble talents 
and defeated hopes whose heart is true may 
lift his head and smile, though his name may 
not be written in the registry of the great, 

"What Is SuccESsr' 

"What is success? To gain a share of gold? 
To have one's wealth in envious accents told? 
To see one's picture flaunted in the press? 
Ah, there be those who label this success. 
What is success? To win a little fame? 
To hear a fickle world applaud your name? 
To be counted a genius? Yes, 
And there be those who label this success. 
But have you not another standard still 
To judge a man of character and will? 
Are gold and fame the only measure tried? 
In all this world is there no test beside? 
Ah, yes ! The man who meets with courage grim 
The daily duties that devolve on him, 
The petty, mean, heartbreaking cares that tire 
The patient soul who never may aspire, 
Howe'er so cramped the field wherein he works, 
He has not failed — the man who never shirks — 
91 



THE MAN WHO DARES 

The man who toils for years without a break 
And treads the path of pain for others' sake. 
There are a myriad of such men to-day, 
Who all unnoted walk the dolorous way — 
Upon their shoulders still the cross may pres 
But who will say they have not won success?" 



92 



Ill 

THE SHORT CUT 



Dedicated to the proposition that a 
straight hne is not always the shortest dis- 
tance between two points. 

A note of warning against cutting corners 
and the indiscriminate practice of abbrevia- 
tion which often defeats the object it is de- 
signed to compass. 



Ill 

THE SHORT CUT 

What Columbus Was Looking For 

Something over four hundred years ago 
an Italian sailor in command of a small 
Spanish fleet — ^the largest vessel in it not 
much larger than a trolley car — started on 
the most memorable voyage ever undertaken 
by any navigator, with the possible exception 
of Noah. Columbus was looking for a new 
way to reach an old place. The old way, 
which men had traveled ever since the cru- 
sades had made India the trade center of the 
world, had been overrun and shut off by the 
Turks. A new route had been promptly 
found by an enterprising Portuguese, but it 
proved too long and too slow for an age 
that was beginning to demand speed. 

The voyage of Columbus was the begin- 
ning of "modern times," with all which that 
suggests of haste and scramble, of impatience 
and ambition, the abandonment of old ideas 

95 



THE MAN WHO DARES 

and the taking on of new; the beginning of 
invention, the initiation of new methods in 
education, of reHgious reforms, of social in- 
novations, with a plentiful infusion of crank- 
isms and fads. 

For two centuries the nations of Europe 
followed the lead of Columbus, trying to find 
the East by saihng West. But they never 
found it. They found other things much 
more valuable, but they never found what 
they were looking for. There was no such 
thing. 

Short Cuts which Get There and 
Short Cuts which Do Not 

It is characteristic of mankind to want to 
get to the point of destination by the quick- 
est and shortest route. That is the motive 
and the mainspring of all discovery, all in- 
vention, all improvement. That is the reason 
the locomotive superseded the stagecoach 
and the reason electricity is superseding 
steam. That is the why and wherefore of 
harvesting and linotype machines, of air- 
planes, submarines, and sixteen-inch guns. 
It is better to tunnel a mountain or bridge 

96 



THE SHORT CUT 

a chasm than to detour for fifty miles in order 
to get around them; better to save your 
energy by taking an elevator than to climb 
stairs. 

But there are some things which cannot 
be reached or realized by the method of ab- 
breviation. We must distinguish between 
the short cut which brings us to an actual 
goal with a real economy of time and labor, 
and the short cut which connects nothing and 
gets nowhere; the short cut which defeats 
its own end by eliminating the only means by 
which that end can be safely and profitably 
attained. 

We are seeking to reach speedily and 
without labor a goal or a possession which 
only effort and struggle can realize or make 
of any value. We are hunting for a short 
cut to about everything that is worth while 
and to a good many things that are not; a 
short cut to wealth for the man who does not 
want to work, by way of stock gambling and 
speculation ; a short cut to health by way of 
fake sanitariums and patent medicines for 
the man who thinks he can violate the laws 
of nature and escape the inexorable penalty ; 

97 



THE MAN WHO DARES 

a short cut to knowledge by predigested sub- 
stitutes for the difficult and disagreeable 
process of concentration ; a short cut to good 
government by the initiative and referen- 
dum, the popular election of senators, and a 
hundred other inventions of a lazy citizenship 
to annul the irrevocable law that "eternal 
vigilance is the price of hberty" ; a short cut 
to the millennium by reform bills and social 
legislation ; and, finally, a short cut to heaven 
— which we are not quite sure exists, but 
which we want to make in case it does — by a 
scalper's ticket or a free pass. In brief, we 
are looking for a short cut not only to the 
benefits and enjoyments of this world, but to 
all the blessings of the next. 

Our newspapers and magazines abound 
and our mails are swollen with advertise- 
ments of commercial schemes which bear 
upon their very face the palpable stamp of 
fraud; corner lots on the "lake front" that 
prove to be twenty feet deep in the Florida 
Everglades; gold mines and oil wells guar- 
anteed to pay a hundred per cent dividend 
the first year. Officials of the United States 
Post Office have estimated the annual losses 

98 



THE SHORT CUT 

of the "unsuspecting public" who invest in 
this species of short cut alone at sixty-five 
million dollars. 

The Short Cut in Finance 

Here is a young bank clerk, living beyond 
his income. He has a small salary and an 
extravagant wife. Or, not to lay all the 
blame on his wife, who may be the old- 
fashioned, home-loving sort — though the 
probabilities are she is nothing of the kind — 
he wants an automobile or a new house, when 
he has not money enough to buy a lawn- 
mower. What does he do? Work hard and 
save? Not at all. That is too slow, too 
"old-fashioned." He thinks he will play the 
stock market. Most every one who tries that 
game fails, and fails disastrously, and the 
young man knows it, but he thinks he is 
going to be the exception. He is "lucky" 
and the ordinary risks do not hold for him. 
He will succeed where others failed. He has 
no capital, but that does not worry him — the 
bank has. He has no credit, but that worries 
him even less — he does not need any by the 
method he proposes to employ. He bor- 

99 



THE MAN WHO DARES 

rows from the bank, without security and 
without saying anything to the directors, but 
fully intending to pay it all back as soon as 
he has turned the trick, and buys steel or 
some speculative stock on margin. And as 
soon as he buys it, it drops. He borrows 
more to cover. It drops again, and he 
borrows still more. In a few days he has 
borrowed and lost twenty thousand dollars 
of the bank's capital. He is a defaulter, with 
a sensational exposure and a prison sentence 
staring him in the face. 

Now, reverse the hypothesis, and suppose 
the young man wins. He pays the bank 
what he borrowed, secretly, of course, just 
as he took it. He stands a winner by twenty 
thousand dollars. Nobody is the wiser and 
the bank has not lost a cent. He pats him- 
self on the head and makes up his mind to 
try it again, not for a paltry twenty thou- 
sand, but for a hundred thousand. He re- 
peats the process — and loses. And he is 
bound to lose in the long run. 

The Ultimate Effect 

The short cut in finance has made some 
100 



THE SHORT CUT 

men rich, but that is not the point. The ul- 
timate question is not, What is going to be 
the effect of your method of making money 
on your fortune? but, What is going to be 
its effect on you? The young man who tries 
the short cut described and loses is ruined. 
If he wins, he is even worse off than if he 
had lost, for he is lulled into a false security 
because he has "got away" with a dangerous 
game. He has made money which he did not 
earn, and by a method which, had it failed, 
would have involved a criminal prosecution 
and public disgrace. He has become con- 
firmed in the pernicious doctrine that the 
penalty and obloquy of wrongdoing attach 
not to the wrong act, but only to its detection 
and exposure. In justifying his course by 
its success he has blinded his moral percep- 
tions, and in making his excuses pass cur- 
rency with his conscience he has deprived 
himself of all protection against future 
temptation. There is a great difference be- 
tween making a living and making a life. 
The short cut to building a fortune is all 
right provided it does not defeat the para- 
mount task of building a character. You 

101 



THE MAN WHO DARES 

can make the process of getting a living 
minister to the aim of building a life, but I 
leave it to you whether most methods of 
getting a living without work will bring you 
very far toward the goal of character. 

Luck 

Now and then something occurs which we 
call "luck" and which seems to open a short 
cut to an otherwise distant goal, but it offers 
nothing reliable by which we may safely and 
surely shape our course. A poor man may 
once in a lifetime pick up a coin of value in 
a place where such things are not usually 
discovered, but the profession of scrutinizing 
sidewalks and floors for chance coins would 
not be a paying business. A four-leaf clover 
is a ''lucky" find, but the vegetation that 
colors the landscape and feeds the herds is 
the ordinary grass and herbage. There are 
a few men in every generation who are ex- 
ceptionally well endowed, just as there may 
be four-leaf clovers in every lawn and hay- 
field and an occasional five-dollar gold piece 
turning up in unexpected places. But the 
work of the world is not done in the main by 

102 



THE SHORT CUT 

the genius ; it is done by the average men, of 
industrious plodding habits and toilsome ac- 
complishment. Even men of acknowledged 
genius attribute their success principally to 
hard work. 

When Theodore Roosevelt entered Har- 
vard Colkge he was an undeveloped youth 
of feeble health and frail physique, a capital 
subject for tuberculosis. He became one of 
the "seven wonders of the world" for physi- 
cal stamina and endurance How did he do 
it? Did the proverbial Roosevelt "luck" un- 
cover some magic elixir, hid from the foun- 
dation of the earth, awaiting the advent of 
America's favorite son? Quite the reverse. 
It was the slow and painful product of labor- 
ious effort, of systematic cultivation, of self- 
restraint when others gave free rein to the 
riotous impulses of youth. Theodore Roose- 
velt found no short cut to health. It was all 
a matter of method and not at all of magic. 

One day when Edmund Burke had over- 
whelmed Parliament by his eloquence, his 
brother Richard, amazed and bewildered, 
stood alone in a revery and was overheard 
saying to himself: "How on earth has Ned 

103 



THE MAN WHO DARES 

contrived to monopolize all the talent of the 
family? O, I think I see it. While we were 
at play he was always at work. I shall rival 
the ease with which he seizes immortality by 
the certainty with which I shall seize ob- 
livion." Edmund Burke found no short cut 
to statesmanship and power. He invoked 
the law of patient endurance. 

Darwin labored for twenty-two years on 
the Origin of Species, which revolutionized 
the world of science. Darwin found no short 
cut to scientific knowledge. He followed the 
beaten course of concentrated purpose. 

The Short Cut in School 

The school and the college are famous for 
the short cut, sought by the lazy who lack 
ambition, or the ambitious who lack persist- 
ence. You can get your degree — if the de- 
gree is all you want — with a minimum of 
study and application; by cheating, if you 
are clever enough, or by bluffing, which is a 
sort of first cousin to cheating; but you will 
never get an education that way. To get the 
diploma or the degree without the education 
is like having a bank book with nothing on 

104 



THE SHORT CUT 

deposit or a check book with nothing to draw. 
The knowledge that is power is more than 
information, more than the mere accumula- 
tion of facts. It means the ability to think 
and to produce with the independent stamp 
of your own mind and individuality. This is 
not the sole property of genius; certainly it 
is not in any sense the possession of the cheat 
or the bluffer. It is the natural return of 
consistent intellectual toil. 

New Paths in Religion 

Old-fashioned Christianity is a pretty hard 
thing to live. It is not easy to love your 
neighbor as yourself. It is not easy to en- 
counter reverses, disappointments, ingrati- 
tude, misfortune, and keep the spirit sweet, 
the mind charitable, and faith unshaken. It 
is not easy to meet prosperity or possess 
power and keep the heart humble and the 
life uncontaminated. If anybody has not 
found these things hard it is probably be- 
cause he has not tried them. What an 
inviting field for the short cut! What is 
more desirable than heaven, and what is more 
difficult than getting there? So we invent a 

105 



THE MAX WHO DARES 

new cult. We take the words of Jesus and 
carefully prune them; leave out all his hard 
sayings ; take the backbone out of his scath- 
ing denunciations and the bite out of his 
sarcasm ; take the virtue out of faith and the 
inspiration out of sacrifice and struggle ; bor- 
row a pretty sentiment from some pagan 
poet, a few^ moral precepts from Confucius, 
and a handful of intellectual fog from 
Buddha; shake them together and label the 
mixture "Xew Thought" or ''Christian 
Science" or "Ethical Culture." It sounds 
elevated and religious and at the same time 
lays no burden upon the conscience and ex- 
acts no tribute from our jaded intellects and 
enfeebled wills. 

''The Celestial Railroad'"' 

You remember in Bunyan's Pilgrim's 
Progress that as Christian leaves the City 
of Destruction for the Celestial City it 
is an arduous and perilous journey which 
he undertakes. It is in the face of ridi- 
cule and persecution from friends and 
family, and under a heavy burden which 
he can drop only at the foot of the cross. 

106 



THE SHORT CUT 

He sinks in the Slough of Despond, 
chmbs the hill of Difficulty, suffers in 
the Valley of Humiliation, is sore wounded 
in the fight with Apollyon, is buffeted in 
Vanity Fair, falls into the clutches of Giant 
Despair and languishes in a dungeon in 
Doubting Castle, and at last crosses the 
River of Death and gains a triumphant entry 
into the City Eternal amid the acclamations 
of rejoicing angels. It is a simple allegory 
which has brought hope and comfort and 
encouragement to many a struggling and 
exhausted soul. Hawthorne in one of his 
inimitable fantasies has given us an ad- 
mirable satire on the short cut to the City 
which Bunyan's hero sought and gained with 
such pertinacity of effort. An enterprising 
corporation built a railroad between the City 
of Destruction and the Celestial City to 
obviate the difficulties and dangers of the 
Christian pilgrimage. They filled the Slough 
of Despond with books on philosophy and 
the higher criticism and on that as a founda- 
tion erected an elegant but rather insubstan- 
tial bridge. The luggage of the passengers, 
consisting of questionable habits and other 

107 



THE MAN WHO DARES 

dross of human nature, instead of being 
borne upon the back until they fell off at the 
foot of the cross, were neatly stowed in the 
baggage car, to be dehvered to their owners 
at the end of the journey and enjoyed to the 
full in the Celestial City. Apollyon was 
hired as engineer. Mr. Greatheart, the 
doughty old champion of the foot pilgrims, 
was offered the job of brakeman, but refused 
because he could not compromise his former 
differences with Apollyon. The hill Diffi- 
culty w^as pierced by a spacious tunnel with 
a double track. The material excavated from 
the heart of the hill DifBcultj^ was used to fill 
up the Valley of Humiliation. Even the 
Valley of the Shadow of Death was il- 
lumined by artificial light manufactured 
from the inflammable gases w^hich exuded 
from the soil. Tophet, which Bunyan desig- 
nated by such plain speech and took so 
seriously, was described as the crater of a 
half extinct volcano in which the directors 
had caused forges to be set up for the manu- 
facture of railroad iron and the supply of 
fuel. Vanity Fair, which had been implacably 
hostile to the foot pilgrims of Christian's day, 

108 



THE SHORT CUT 

was very friendly to the railroad which 
brought business, and the capitalists of the 
town were among the road's heaviest stock- 
holders. The castle of Giant Despair was 
turned into a hotel and the River of Death 
crossed by a steam ferryboat. All in all, the 
railroad prospectus painted such a delightful 
picture that everybody hastened to buy a 
ticket — politicians, millionaires, leaders of 
fashion, ladies of society, all eager to combine 
the spiritual benefits of a religious pilgrim- 
age with the festive pleasures of a holiday 
excursion. 

No Franchise 

But in all these elaborate and luxurious 
preparations there was one thing overlooked. 
The Lord of the Celestial City had never 
granted the railroad a franchise, and no trav- 
eler could enter his dominion on a ticket over 
that line. The man who bought a passage 
lost the purchase money, which was the price 
of his own soul. The whole thing was a 
fraud and a delusion. The Celestial Rail- 
road instead of being a short cut to the Celes- 
tial City proved to be a short cut to a totally 

109 



THE MAN WHO DARES 

different destination — which the directors 
said did not even exist — a destination located 
under the crater of Tophet, which was not an 
extinct volcano, after all. 

Why Experiexce Is a Slow Teacher 

The world is full of men and women who 
think they can cheat God by the short cut. 
The stream of history and the pathway of life 
are fairly lurid with warning signals that it 
cannot be done, and still the myriad hosts 
rush on like blind men to a self-inflicted fate. 

If the world were made up of the same 
people who lived on from age to age, it would 
learn its most important lessons after one 
hard course in the school of experience. But 
it is not. It is a new world every thirty or 
forty years and each generation begins and 
ends at the same place. By the time one has 
paid the price and learned its lesson it is too 
late to profit by it because the time is all used 
up, and the next simply repeats the process. 
Perhaps by and by we shall reach the point 
where we shall be ready to heed the warnings 
and apply the wisdom of competent tutors. 
When w^e do we shall hit a faster pace. 

110 



THE SHORT CUT 

Now and then a bad man seems to reform 
by an instantaneous conversion. But he 
really does not. He only starts to turn 
around. The reformation of character, like 
the formation of character, is a long and toil- 
some process. You cannot sow wild oats, 
wallow in the mire of vicious, indulgence, 
systematically neglect your higher interests 
for the best years of your life, and then in 
some sudden spasm of emotion begin all over 
again and strike a short cut to sobriety, 
virtue, and sainthood. Possibly some one is 
mentally asking the question, ''How about 
the prodigal son — didn't he strike a short 
cut?" No, he did not. He found his way 
home, but it was a long, hard, rough road, 
and he traveled it on foot. He was welcomed 
back, and he probably lived a respectable life 
afterward, but he was never the man he 
would have been had he not wandered to the 
''far country" and lived with the harlots and 
the swine. No short cut here — only the slow 
remorseless grinding of the mills of God. 

Essential Things 

Two classes of people have filled the world 
111 



THE MAX WHO DARES 

in all ages : those who live for essentials and 
achieve character, and those who live for non- 
essentials and perish with the things which 
possess them. The essential thing, the perma- 
nent thing, is always the impulse, the motive, 
the purpose, the ideal, which lies back of every 
act and directs and individualizes every 
achievement. Whatever we may be striving 
for — whether it is wealth, or knowledge, or 
power, or a plain, simple living — the essen- 
tial thing, the thing that counts, is not the 
dollar, not the diploma, not the title, not even 
the livehhood, but the honesty of the aim, the 
persistency of the effort, the nobility of the 
struggle, the courage with which we meet 
disaster and defeat, the earnestness and self- 
abnegation with which we turn talent and 
opportunity to the Godlike purpose of help- 
ing mankind. 

Occasionally some deed of startling bril- 
liancy may arrest the gaze or excite the envy 
of the world ; but because it involves no toil- 
some effort, no victory of faith, no slow and 
arduous triumph of patience, it stands as 
something wholly apart and distinct from the 
life of its author. But with effort and faith 

112 



THE SHORT CUT 

and patience the humblest deeds become so 
inwrought into the character of the man that 
success or failure in mere externals is a small 
thing as compared with that spiritual victory 
which he has achieved in himself. 

The Only Way 

The goal of true leadership, the path of 
true achievement, the accomplishment of 
true usefulness, all lie the way of effort and 
struggle and sacrifice. Only as we appre- 
hend and accept the stringent demands of 
this immutable law of spiritual development 
shall we attain the rugged proportions of 
strength and power. For there is no short 
cut to character. 



113 



J 



IV 
THE QUEST OF WISDOM 



"My son, if thou wilt receive my words, 
and hide my commandments with thee; 

''So that thou incHne thine ear unto wis- 
dom, and apply thine heart to understand- 
ing; 

"Yea, if thou criest after knowledge, and 
lif test up thy voice for understanding ; 

"If thou seekest her as silver, and search- 
est for her as for hid treasures; . 

"Then shalt thou understand the fear of || 

the Lord, and find the knowledge of God." 



1 



IV 

THE QUEST OF WISDOM 

The Splendor of Solomon 
The author and sage to whom these words 
are commonly ascribed hved several thou- 
sand years ago. He was among the greatest 
monarchs that ever filled a throne or swayed 
a scepter, in days when thrones and scepters 
were rated somewhat higher than is the case 
now. His name belongs to all tongues and 
over all the earth abides the shadow of his 
fame. It is said of Caesar Augustus that he 
found Rome brick and left it marble. But 
Solomon ''made silver to be in Jerusalem as 
the stones of the street." Around his capital 
he built a wall of prodigious height and 
strength and adorned the city with magnifi- 
cent edifices. His own palaces, profuse in 
number, were of unrivaled splendor; while 
the temple, the greatest work of his hands, 
was the costliest that wealth and piety ever 
reared to the worship of Christian God or 
pagan deity. Its dedication marked the cul- 

117 



THE MAN WHO DARES 

minating glory of the Jewish nation. The 
temples of Egypt, India, Greece, or Rome 
never have commanded half the interest 
which the world has bestowed upon the tem- 
ple of Solomon at Jerusalem. It covered 
with imperishable renown the reign of its 
builder, and is to this day regarded by devout 
Jews the world over with mingled emotions 
of sorrow and pride. 

Among the cities attributed by tradition 
to the creative hand of Solomon was Pal- 
myra, the "City of the Desert," whose lonely 
yet majestic ruins the travelers of to-day still 
pause to contemplate and admire. 

His mercantile enterprises surpassed all 
previous achievements of the kind. He 
opened ports on the coast of Edom and sent 
his ships to Arabia and India and Ceylon, 
whence they returned freighted with the 
choice products of the East. He launched 
his navies upon the Mediterranean, and his 
argosies plowed through the waves that wash 
the shores of the British Isles. 

His wealth probably exceeded that of any 
monarch or millionaire who ever lived, before 
or since. His annual income has been es- 

118 



THE QUEST OF WISDOM 

timated at seven hundred millions of dollars, 
or about eighty thousand dollars an hour; 
while of his intellectual attainments it is 
written, ''All the kings of the earth sought 
his presence to hear his wisdom." He was 
skilled in all departments of knowledge and 
craft, and was even credited with power to 
control the spirits of the invisible world. In 
many respects he was the most remarkable 
man that ever lived, and his career presents 
one of the strangest problems of human na- 
ture. Beginning life under bright morning 
skies, dark clouds obscured its noonday 
splendor. The wisest of men by the special 
favor of heaven, he became by choice the 
greatest of fools. A type of Christ, yet of 
his own salvation no man can affirm. Ne- 
hemiah said of him, "Among many nations 
was there no king like him, who was beloved 
of his God." But the time came when God 
declared, "Behold, I will rend the kingdom 
out of the hand of Solomon." He uttered 
powerful warnings against the fascinations 
of "strange women," and then married or 
otherwise annexed to his domestic establish- 
ment a full thousand of them. It was Solo- 

119 



THE MAN WHO DARES 

mon who counseled, "Keep thy heart with 
all diligence; for out of it are the issues of 
hfe." Yet he suffered his own heart to be 
seduced from the paths of his admonition. 
In early life a humble worshiper of Jehovah, 
in after years he turned apostate, reared 
altars to the gods of the heathen, and sacri- 
ficed to Moloch. 

Contradictions of Precept and Practice 

And yet, despite the contradictions of his 
character and the inconsistencies of his 
course, no man ever uttered wiser words than 
Solomon concerning the problem of life and 
the duty of man. It detracts nothing from 
the value of his counsel that he himself for- 
sook his own principles and became an 
idolater and backslider. Some men have 
lectured on temperance and died of alcohol- 
ism. A New England navigator who had 
charted the dangerous reefs of the Massa- 
chusetts coast wrecked his own vessel on a 
sunken rock which he himself had described 
and of which he warned others. A surgeon 
on one of the Arctic expeditions of the last 
century earnestly and repeatedly cautioned 

120 



THE QUEST OF WISDOM 

his fellow voyagers against the peril of yield- 
ing to the almost overmastering impulse to 
sleep ; but the surgeon himself fell asleep and 
perished. History and experience abound 
with appalling contrasts of precept and ex- 
ample. The failure of a pilot to follow his 
own chart, or of a preacher to hold his own 
life up to the level of his own pulpit admo- 
nitions, in nowise discredits his knowledge or 
his doctrine, but, rather, brings out the truth 
of his words and the tragedy of his failure, 
and thus enhances the value of the lessons to 
be drawn from his career. So of the counsels 
of Solomon; they are like the warning cries 
of the shipwrecked mariner as he sinks be- 
neath the flood. The whole tenor of his 
exhortation is that of profound and painful 
experience. 

Scriptural and Spiritual Meaning of 
Wisdom 

In the words which introduce this chapter 
the royal author sets before us the supreme 
object of aspiration and desire, the finding 
of true religion presented under the name of 
wisdom. 

121 



THE MAN WHO DARES 

In common terms wisdom means the uses 
of mind ; knowledge, the possessions of mind ; 
understanding, the measure of mind. Un- 
derstanding discerns ; knowledge appre- 
hends; wisdom applies. 

"Knowledge dwells in heads replete with thoughts 
of other mer 
Wisdom in minds attentive to their own. 
Knowledge is proud that it has learned so much ; 
Wisdom is humble that it knows no more." 

Solomon said of knowledge, "Fools hate 
it." Of Israel, absorbed in idolatry, over 
whom impended woes from heaven, God de- 
clared, "My people are destroyed for lack 
of knowledge"; while of understanding, it 
was a youth devoid of it that the wise man 
describes when looking through the window 
of his palace he "beheld among the simple 
ones a young man void of understanding," 
going in the evening hour to the house of her 
whose "feet go down to death" and whose 
"steps take hold on hell." 

In the sacred writings a high import is 
attached to each of these terms, but to wis- 
dom is accorded preeminent distinction: 

122 



THE QUEST OF WISDOM 

"Wisdom is the principal thing; therefore 
get wisdom." 

"Happy is the man that findeth wis- 
dom. ..." 

"For the merchandise of it is better than 
the merchandise of silver, and the gain 
thereof than fine gold. 

"She is more precious than rubies: and all 
the things thou canst desire are not to be 
compared unto her. 

"Length of days is in her right hand; and 
in her left hand riches and honor. 

"Her ways are ways of pleasantness, and 
all her paths are peace." 

Away back in the morning twilight of his- 
tory we hear the patriarch Job inquiring, 

"Where shall wisdom be found? and where 
is the place of understanding? . . ." 

"The depth saith, It is not in me: and the 
sea saith, It is not with me. 

"It cannot be gotten for gold, neither shall 
silver be weighed for the price thereof. 

"It cannot be valued with the gold of 
Ophir, with the precious onyx, or the sap- 
phire. . . . 

"No mention shall be made of coral, or of 
123 



THE MAN WHO DARES 

pearls: for the price of wisdom is above 
rubies. 

"The topaz of Ethiopia shall not equal it, 
neither shall it be valued with pure gold. 

''Whence then cometh wisdom? and where 
is the place of understanding?" 

Distraction vs. Concentration 

For the attainment of this spiritual treas- 
ure, so highly appraised by the masters of 
thought and experience, the instruction is 
given, ''Incline thine ear and apply thine 
heart." In the school of wisdom, as in all 
other schools, the conscious attitude of the 
pupil determines the results of his study. 
He must turn his ear toward the heavens to 
catch the first low whispers of Wisdom's 
voice ; and while the ear is listening the heart 
must be applied with unbroken attention to 
understand what is heard. These are not 
easy injunctions to obej^. How many of us 
do you suppose really listen, or even know 
how to listen? We think we are listening 
when, as a matter of fact, we are only half 
hearing. The conditions of modern hfe are 
scarcely favorable to the cultivation of that 

124 



THE QUEST OF WISDOM 

habit of mind whose characteristic is rehance 
upon an intangible support, and the secret 
of whose power is to ''look not at the things 
which are seen, but at the things which are 
not seen/' The mighty rushing wind, the 
convulsive earthquake, the scorching fire of 
business competition, of social rivalry and 
struggle, fill the ear with their deafening roar 
and drown the accents of the "still small 
voice." 

Wisdom is to be sought after as silver or 
hidden treasure is sought. That is, the pur- 
suit of it must be inspired and sustained by 
that eagerness and zest, that passion of re- 
solve, with which avarice seeks for money. 
Wisdom does not lie exposed upon the sur- 
face. It is hidden in all difficult places; in 
the volumes of forgotten sages, in the con- 
text of the unwritten page, in the cumulative 
experiences of mankind, in unfathomable 
sources. It must be dug, and no rock or 
other obstruction is to be allowed to discour- 
age or interrupt pursuit. Mountains of dif- 
ficulty must be tunneled, deserts must be 
braved where the darkness of despair hangs 
heavy on the soul, and the deep waters of sor- 

125 



THE MAN WHO DARES 

row must be sounded if we are to extract and 
bring to light the object of the heart's desire. 
It is not unhkely that these treasures are 
purposely concealed in order that the spirit- 
ual energies of man may be developed in 
their earnest search. Everything worth 
while costs, and the more worth while it is, 
the higher the price. And especially true is 
it that without unflagging and protracted 
toil the things of God are not to be attained. 
The kingdom of God and his righteousness 
must be sought first, sought exclusively, 
sought as the supreme goal of the soul's in- 
tensest striving. The inclination to postpone 
eternal realities to vanishing shadows; the 
easy indifference that dismisses consideration 
of the prime concern of life to some vague 
indefinite to-morrow; the lazy but perilous 
optimism that says, ''It will all come out 
right in the end," or "God is too benevolent, 
too good-natured, to execute the penalties of 
his violated law" — these are blunders of 
short-sighted or perverted vision. 

A Practical Test 

To ''understand the fear of the Lord, and 
126 



THE QUEST OF WISDOM 

find the knowledge of God" is the unfaihng 
goal to which the paths of wisdom lead. 
"This is life eternal, to know thee, and Jesus 
Christ whom thou hast sent." Not that we 
shall attain a complete intellectual grasp of 
the Infinite, for "His ways are past finding 
out, and his paths are in the sea." But such 
a knowledge may be acquired, such an ap- 
prehension may be experienced, as will divest 
the mind of all uncertainty as to God's exist- 
ence, and create in the heart the conscious 
realization of his presence and ministry in the 
life. When Lady Henry Somerset, the 
gifted Englishwoman and apostle of tem- 
perance reform, faced a spiritual crisis in her 
life in agonizing doubt as to the reality of 
Christian belief, she heard a voice within the 
inner recess of her consciousness which dis- 
tinctly said, "Act as if I were, and thou shalt 
know that I am." Lady Henry Somerset 
followed the injunction of the Voice, and her 
whole life thereafter bore testimony to her 
unshakable conviction of God's presence. 
Here is the simple proof. Any man or 
woman who wants to know can know by 
making a practical test. "If any man 

127 



THE MAN WHO DARES 

will do his will, he shall know of the doctrine, 
whether it be of God." 

The Place of Authokity and Obedience 
IN THE Religious Life 

Have you ever wondered, possibly re- 
belled, at this obligation of obedience so 
insistently laid down and emphasized? But 
the requirement is not something peculiar 
to God or to God's method. It underhes all 
human science and belongs to the very sub- 
stance of that human nature which Christ 
assumed. You cannot add a column of 
figures without obeying a law of mathe- 
matics, nor play the scale without obeying 
a law of harmonics, nor inflate a tire without 
obeying a law of physics, nor argue a point 
with your neighbor without obeying a law of 
logic. God can perfectly reveal himself to 
man only through man's voluntary obedience 
to God; there is no other way. It is a first 
principle of all influence that there is some- 
thing in every nature which cannot be com- 
municated, something which cannot be 
reached by the mere contact of intelligences. 
There must be a sympathy and a union of 

128 



THE QUEST OF WISDOM 

wills. And as between the superior and the 
inferior, the less and the greater, such sympa- 
thy and union are possible only where there 
is loving authority on the one side and trust- 
ing obedience on the other. You go to a 
school and place yourself under the instruc- 
tion of some capable professor, or you join 
some church and put yourself under the 
spiritual guidance of its pastor. You get 
his thought in his teaching or his preaching, 
the facts he has gathered in his observation 
and his study, the ideas which have come to 
him in his experience. You get a good deal 
in this way, but it does not go to the root 
of your being. But when you have found in 
the professor or the pastor a friend, when 
you have come not only to esteem him for 
what he knows but to love him for what he is, 
and to recognize in his life and character a 
better expression of the will of God than you 
see reflected in your own, then his counsels 
take on a different kind of authority, and you 
obey him because it is your delight to yield 
yourself to his superior leading. A new door 
of communication opens between your life 
and his, and in this new relationship he gives 

129 



THE MAN WHO DARES 

you what he could not give you before — not 
only facts and ideas, but motives, purposes, 
impulses, inspirations. 

So Christ, the supreme Teacher, Preacher 
and Friend, tells us many things about the 
moral universe and its laws we could never 
know without him; but in the closer fellow- 
ship, the deeper and lasting intimacy of love, 
he reveals to us the secret of his nature, the 
source of his power, and makes us like him- 
self. In the first contact information is com- 
municated through intelligence; in the sec- 
ond life is imparted through submission. 

Christ the Embodiment of God in 
Humanity 

When Lord Nelson, England's most fa- 
mous admiral, was resolved to fight, it is said 
he put his glass to his blind eye so that he 
could not see the signal for retiring. So 
there are persons who refuse to see the rev- 
elation of himself which God has given be- 
cause of their natural inability or disinclina- 
tion to perceive spiritual truth. Only once 
has true wisdom been perfectly revealed and 
represented — in Jesus Christ our Lord. So 

130 



*! 



THE QUEST OF WISDOM 

long as we refuse to look at him we may truly 
say we see little evidence of a God who has 
any claim upon our worship, little to per- 
suade or impel us to seek out the knowledge 
of God as exemplified in him. But in Christ 
we have the God whose "ways are past find- 
ing out" made intelligible, manifest in the 
flesh. In Christ we find that which proves 
itself divine — a God who declares with his 
own word and proclaims by his own acts that 
infinite greatness is infinite capacity for love 
and service; who opens his resources to the 
unlimited use of his needy children, and finds 
in their blunders, their struggles, their en- 
tanglements and griefs, but a fit field for the 
ampler operation of his Fatherly love. 

What It Means and What It Does Not 
Mean to Be a Christian 

The process of making a man wise in the 
knowledge of God is simply the process of 
making him a Christian, or — a better Chris- 
tian. We are too accustomed to think and 
speak of Christian character as if it were 
some distinct and different species or product 
of experience, an ideal essentially strange 

131 



THE MAN WHO DARES 

and foreign to human nature. And so it too 
often happens that normal and healthy 
young minds are led to repel the suggestion 
of Christian discipleship, not because its 
standard is exacting, but because its impli- 
cations seem to belittle a type of character 
attainment which commands instinctive and 
spontaneous homage. But there is no vague 
array of celestial qualities which belong to 
the Christian life in the sense that they are 
not intrinsic human qualities. "The Chris- 
tian character," says Phillips Brooks, ''is 
nothing but the completed human charac- 
ter. . . . The Christian graces are nothing 
but the natural virtues held up into the light 
of Christ. They are made of the same stuff; 
they are lifted along the same lines ; but they 
have found their pinnacle. They have caught 
the illumination which their souls desire. 
Manliness has not been changed into Godli- 
ness; it has fulfilled itself in Godliness." 
That is to say, the idea is not to make a Chris- 
tian by unmaking a man. Human courage, 
human patience, human hope, human faith — 
these touched by the fire of God make the 
graces of the Christian life. 

132 



THE QUEST OF WISDOM 

How Man^s Will Becomes a Part of the 
Law of God 

But while Wisdom is thus exalted as the 
climax of spiritual attainment, acceptance 
of the ideal and compliance with the condi- 
tions of its realization lie solely within the 
power of the human will. "If thou wilt 
receive my words, and hide my command- 
ments with thee." "If thou wilt" — the tone 
is a tone of entreaty, but the words carry the 
conscious recognition of man's freedom, and, 
in a sense, of his equality with God. The 
philosopher may prove to his own satisfac- 
tion that man is a puppet, pulled by the 
strings of some invisible mechanical force, 
and that all his actions are ordered by an 
iron law of necessity, whether it is the act of 
subscribing to foreign missions or the act of 
robbing a bank. But consciously man is self- 
determining and free, the possessor of a will 
and the master of his destiny. We can all 
recall moments when we stood face to face 
with some big decisive crisis in our lives and 
realized with startling vividness our indi- 
vidual responsibility and our individual 

133 



THE MAN WHO DARES 

power, realized it by an intuition swift and 
unerring, which alwaj'S stood confii-med by 
the sternest logic. In the last analysis every 
man is alone responsible for his life, and for 
his character, which is the crystalHzation of 
hfe. God would never have constructed 
man so that he would experience self -blame 
or remorse for doing the thing which he could 
not help doing, or for not doing the thing 
which he could not have done had he tried. 

The law of the land, statutory and com- 
mon, is above any individual. The individual 
is governed by the law; he must abide by it, 
he dare not violate it. Yet he has the right 
to dispose of himself and his property as he 
pleases. He makes a contract by his own 
free act and the courts will enforce it against 
him as a i^art of the law of the land. He 
writes his will, and if the signature is genuine 
it becomes hkewise a part of the law of the 
land, and the highest tribunal of justice can- 
not, dare not, set it aside. So do you in the 
royal chamber of your soul write your will 
and dispose of your immortal self. The law 
of God is above vou and rules vou ; but vour 
will thus becomes with his consent a part 

134. 



THE QUEST OF WISDOM 

of the law of God. Heaven's highest court 
must admit to probate that will unques- 
tioned. 

The Testimony of the ''Wise Man^^ 

Is there any permanent satisfaction or 
happiness possible for man outside of his 
voluntary choice of God's ways? Many 
could answer that question. I will call one 
witness. I select him because I think he is 
the best witness I could summon to prove 
this point. I believe he had the best oppor- 
tunity to find out by actual test under the 
most propitious conditions if there is any- 
thing really worth while which can be offered 
as a substitute for the counsels of the text. 
Solomon set himself to solve the universal 
problem, "What is that good for the sons 
of men which they should do under the 
heaven all the days of their life?" Or, in 
popular language. What is the secret of hap- 
piness? And if ever in the history of the 
race there lived a man competent to solve 
that problem, it was Israel's fortunate king. 
He had the three prime qualifications which 
the world regards as indispensable to a fair 

135 



THE MAN WHO DARES 

test, namely, great wealth, great power, 
great intelligence. And after he had ex- 
perimented for a lifetime in all conceivable 
directions, what is his verdict? Let him 
answer for himself. 

Yonder he stands upon the balcony of his 
palace. He gazes out over his immense pos- 
sessions, his extensive estates, his cattle, his 
flocks and herds, his palaces profuse in num- 
ber and magnificent in adornment. He 
thinks of his vast commerce, of his ships 
laden with the fruits of every clime. The 
ripple of brooks and the murmur of foun- 
tains fall upon his ear. But a cloud rests 
upon the monarch's brow. His lips move. 
Is it a sentiment of joy and thanksgiving 
that they utter, inspired by the gratifying 
prospect of his limitless wealth? Hardly; 
for joy does not speak in the accents of de- 
spair. Approach him and listen. 

"Vanity of vanities, all is vanity. I hated 
all my labor which I have taken under the 
sun ; for I shall leave it to the man who shall 
come after me, and who knoweth whether he 
shall be a wise man or a fool?" 

"But," you reply, "if your material pos- 
186 



THE QUEST OF WISDOM 

sessions and achievements fail to meet the 
deeper longings of your nature, surely your 
extensive literary and intellectual attain- 
ments must be a source of solid and enduring 
satisfaction?" 

He answers, "This also is vexation of 
spirit; for he that increaseth learning in- 
creaseth sorrow; of making many books 
there is no end, and much study is a weari- 
ness to the flesh." 

"You have tried pleasure?" 

"Yes, I said in my heart, Go to, now, I 
will prove thee with mirth, therefore enjoy 
pleasure. And behold, this also is vanity." 

You think you will try him with a chance 
shot, so you say, "But your social surround- 
ings, your friendships, your domestic con- 
nections — are these also a delusion?" 

You can fairly hear the ring of scorn in his 
voice as he replies, "One man in a thousand 
have I found ; but a woman among all those 
have I not found. Confidence in an un- 
faithful friend is like a broken tooth, and 
a foot out of joint. I find more bitter than 
death the woman whose heart is snares and 
nets." 

137 



THE MAN WHO DARES 

"Well, we had supposed that your many 
years, your varied experiences, your excep- 
tional opportunities, had given you cause to 
bless life, to look back upon it with pleasure, 
and to leave it with regret." 

His pessimism deepens as he answers, 
''Wherefore I praised the dead which are 
already dead more than the living which are 
yet alive. Yea, better than both is he which 
hath not yet been born." 

''Well, you are a representative man. You 
have made a great experiment; an experi- 
ment which every man at some time or 
another in his life would like to make for 
himself. You have had unusual facilities for 
successful demonstration. The world has an 
interest in know^ing the result and in hearing 
from your own lips your verdict. What is 
the conclusion of the whole matter?" 

Then answers Solomon in these words: 
''The conclusion of the whole matter is this: 
Fear God and keep his commandments ; for 
this is the whole duty of man. For God 
shall bring every work into judgment, with 
every secret thing, whether it be good or 
whether it be evil." 

138 



THE QUEST OF WISDOM 

The Conclusion of the Matter 

Like Solomon, we are all seeking the 
thing worth while. Some of us follow pleas- 
ure, others ambition, others gain, others 
learning, others the allurements of place and 
power. But every one of us has some object 
of pursuit into which we are putting our 
thought, our energy, our hope, our purpose. 
Elsewhere we may find partial revelations, 
fragmentary experiences, hints of meanings, 
temporary satisfactions. But until we find 
Him whom to know is life eternal — until 
Christ, the human embodiment of God, re- 
veals to us the secret of our life — we shall 
be working without a center, and having no 
center, we shall have no certainty that these 
lesser luminaries in whose pale gleam we 
labor for a season will continue to shed their 
fitful rays along our pathway to the jour- 
ney's end. 

"High Heaven to lowly simple hearts hath wis- 
dom given ; 
Who knoweth Christ aright and in Him lives, 
Hath won the highest prize that Wisdom gives." 



139 



V 

THE AMERICAN SOLDIER 



4 



An appreciation of the enlightened pa- 
triotism, the humanitarian sympathy, and the 
unparalleled intelhgence and courage of that 
noblest specimen of the fighting hero — ^the 
American soldier. 



i 

a 



THE AMERICAN SOLDIER 

His Modesty 

The men who do the really big things in 
life are the least inclined to brag about it. A 
soldier by the name of Davis returning on 
one of the transports told a reporter all 
about the magnificent work of the One Hun- 
dred and Sixty-fifth, the famous New York 
regiment of the Rainbow Division. Davis 
belonged to the One Hundred and Forty- 
ninth Artillery. He was telling how the 
One Hundred and Sixty-fifth threw back 
the German advance in the terrible days at 
Champagne when even the "Blue Devils" 
were in retreat. "You can't say too much 
about those fellows," said Davis, "and noth- 
ing New York can do for them will be too 
good." 

"How about the One Hundred and Forty- 
ninth?" the reporter asked. 

143 



THE MAN WHO DARES 

''Oh, we just stuck around and helped out. 
That's all we did," answered Davis. 

"Just stuck around and helped out"! The 
man who said it wore the Croix de Guerre, 
and the One Hundred and Forty-ninth had 
supported the New York regiment to the 
limit of endurance. The answer was charac- 
teristic of the soldier. Plenty to say in praise 
of others, but nothing about himself. Mod- 
esty and courage — like the grace of woman 
and the strength of man, the complementary 
and sustaining pillars of the human arch — 
are the basic virtues which underhe and 
illuminate the spirit of the hero. 

Thkee Historic Types 

There are three types of soldier. There is 
the mechanical type, illustrated by our late 
adversary, the Prussian; automatic, precise, 
stolid, unthinking, and unfeeling, knouted by 
drill sergeants and kicked by brutal heuten- 
ants into a state of chronic and servile obe- 
dience. This type will march to certain 
death in solid mass formation, not knowing, 
not caring, not capable of understanding 
why. There is only one way to deal with 

144 



THE AMERICAN SOLDIER 

him, but it is a sure way — starvation and 
defeat. For being a machine he will fight 
only as long as he is fed, and carried along 
by the momentum of his initial victories. 
Just one crushing defeat will take all the 
fight out of him. 

There is the fatalistic type, illustrated by 
the Turk, in whom a grim fanatical devotion 
to some ideal or tenet of rehgion submerges 
the instinctive love of hfe, so that death on 
the field of battle becomes a glorified gate- 
way to the joys of paradise or the beatitude 
of enthronement with ancestral deities. The 
actions of this type are governed by a power- 
ful motive which releases him from the clutch 
of the primal instinct. He will storm an im- 
pregnable fortress to the point of mass sui- 
cide, not so much to achieve the impossible 
as to die in the attempt. There is only one 
way to deal with him, and that is to extermi- 
nate him ; for since he prefers a warlike death 
to a peaceful life, you will never settle him 
until you kill him. 

Then there is the individualistic type, the 
free type, exemplified to the highest degree 
in the men who followed Cromwell at Mars- 

;45 



THE MAN WHO DARES 

ton Moor, and Washington at the crossing 
of the Delaware, and Foch and Haig and 
Pershing at the Marne and the Argonne 
Forest; the soldiers who learned to fight 
with ballots before they fought with bullets ; 
men of intelligent conviction, of unfailing 
resource, of indestructible purpose and 
quenchless faith. Ancient or modern wars 
afford no parallel to the courage, the 
versatility, the endurance of the fighting men 
whose tongue is the language of the King 
James Version and the Declaration of Inde- 
pendence, and whose inspiration is the Gos- 
pel of the Square Deal. Anglo-Saxon is the 
best fighting blood of history, but the men 
of this race will fight only under the pres- 
sure of moral conviction, and for only one 
end — liberty; their own or somebody else's. 
The history of all our wars illustrates and 
proves this fact. 

The Motives of American Wars 

The American soldier of 1776 fought for 
che freedom of the soil, violated by a German 
king on a British throne, who had to hire 
foreign mercenaries to do his fighting for 

146 



THE AMERICAN SOLDIER 

him because Englishmen refused to volun- 
teer. 

The American soldier of 1812 won the 
freedom of the seas. 

The American soldier of 1846 redeemed 
the virgin West from the clutch of Mexican 
and Spanish brutality and ignorance, and 
proclaimed free speech, a free press, a free 
church, a free school, and a free government, 
from the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific 
Coast. 

The American soldier of 1861 was a sort 
of Siamese twins with two contradictory con- 
ceptions of liberty, and so he fought with 
himself. The Southern half of him fought 
for local self-government, because he be- 
lieved that the free heritage of his fathers 
could best be preserved by the continued in- 
dependence of the sovereign States. The 
Northern half of him fought for federal self- 
government, because he believed that the 
particular kind of liberty which America 
stood for could be perpetuated and enlarged 
only by a sovereign nation. The greater con- 
ception won because it was the truer. 

The American soldier of 1898 buckled on 
147 



THE MAN WHO DARES 

his father's sword with the glory of Gettys- 
burg still gleaming from its blade, and drove 
the Spaniard from the last entrenclnnent of 
Old World despotism on the western hemi- 
sphere — the Spaniard, to whom God gave 
ten talents in the w^ealth of a continent and 
said, "Occupy till I come;" the Spaniard, 
who had four hundred years in which to 
stamp his impress in character and achieve- 
ment on this plastic civilization, and w^ho has 
left behind him not one enduring memorial, 
not one beneficent institution, not one in- 
tellectual or moral legacy; nothing but an 
adobe hut, a mediaeval rack and thumbscrew, 
and an illegitimate race. 

The American soldier of 1917 — in the 
deathless spirit of '76, with the consecration 
of '61 and the enthusiasm of '98, invincible 
in the courage and purpose which only a 
righteous cause can give — girt up his sturdy 
loins and unsheathed his stainless sword for 
the freedom of the seas, imperiled by a ruth- 
less violence; for the defense of the soil, 
menaced by the aggressions of autocratic and 
conscienceless power ; and for the release and 
salvation of crucified humanity. 

148 



THE AMERICAN SOLDIER 

Adaptability and Audacity 

The American soldier can handle anything 
that genius can invent, and improve it in the 
process of acquaintance. He can make a 
radio operator out of a pile-driver, and a 
flying ace out of a pacifist — provided the 
pacifist has not reached the stage of ''con- 
scientious objector." The German chemists 
who perpetrated the original poisonous gas 
outrage were the most popular men east of 
the Rhine, until the American chemist — 
compelled to fight the devil with his own 
weapons — discovered a worse gas ; then those 
Prussian scientists became the most unpopu- 
lar men east of the Rhine. Gas and flame 
were not our choice of weapons. We pre- 
ferred the trench shotgun. But for every 
pound of liquid gas the Germans sent over 
our lines, we put five pounds over theirs. 
Pushed by necessity or forced by the tactics 
of his foe, the American soldier can use any- 
thing, from a railroad gun to a razor, and 
use it with unexampled and terrible effi- 
ciency. 

An American attacking party at the 
149 



THE MAX WHO DARES 

Maine were preceded by the customary bar- 
rage, which swept along altogether too 
slowly to suit their notions of speed. They 
begged their commanding officer to send 
word back to the artillery, "For the love of 
Mike, lay off that barrage!" The barrage 
was "laid off," and those intrepid Yankees, 
in true American style, advanced on ma- 
chine gun nests, absolutely unprotected, 
cheering as they ran, and bagged the whole 
quarry. 

A type of soldier accustomed to fight only 
by ironclad rule, devoid of initiative and in- 
capable of voluntary action, simply could 
not understand a type of soldier who refused 
to meet the expectations of the German 
High Command and defied the orthodoxy 
of Prussian tactics. The German soldier 
pinned his faith to machine guns, and when 
he found a foe who cared no more for a 
machine gun than he would for a pop gun, 
all the fight oozed out of him and he fell down 
like an empty bag. "You don't play fair," 
the Prussian officers complained. "We 

shoot vou, and vou won't stav dead. We 

ft ^ » ft 

take you prisoners, and you turn around and 

150 



THE AMERICAN SOLDIER 

capture us. We aren't used to that kind of 
a game." 

There is only one safe way to deal with 
this type, and that is to keep out of the reach 
of his bayonet. For while the American 
never seeks a fight for the sake of fighting, 
he never runs away from one if it is forced 
on him. He is a good deal like Thomas H. 
Benton, who was United States Senator 
from Missouri in the days when there were 
giants in the land. Mr. Benton was a dead 
shot with the dueling pistol — a proficiency 
acquired by a lifetime of practice on human 
targets. Some one said to him in his old age, 
"Senator, I suppose you have had a good 
many quarrels in your day?" 

"No, sir," replied the distinguished states- 
man, with stately dignity, "I never quarrel. 
But I sometimes jight, and when I do, a 
funeral usually follows." 

The American soldier has fought in 
France and the sequel is the funeral of Prus- 
sian militarism. He is the despair of his 
enemies and the amazement of his comrades 
in arms. Dash him to earth and he will rise 
again like Antseus seven times stronger than 

151 



THE MAN WHO DARES 

before. You cannot discourage him, for 
faith is the indestructible basis of his moral 
composition. You cannot conquer him, for 
as long as he believes in the righteousness of 
his cause he will subsist without rations and 
fight without ammunition. You cannot ex- 
terminate him, for he is not made of perish- 
able stuff. 

America to the Rescue 

From a purely human and military point 
of view, Germany had won this war when 
America jumped in. I would not minimize 
or disparage the superb resistance, the iron 
determination, the persevering ardor of the 
Allied forces, who held the Hun at bay until 
America was mentally disposed and physi- 
cally prepared to save an imperiled world. 
But Brussels fell despite the gallant purpose 
of struggling Belgium. The Prussian guns 
dropped their shells on Paris. Britain held 
the seas, but Germany held her territorial 
gains. The submarine levied increasing toll 
of death, and the field-gray hordes pressed 
nearer the Channel ports. "They shall not 
pass!" cried the heroes of Verdun^ ^s the 

15a 



THE AMERICAN SOLDIER 

iron fortress strained beneath the fury of 
assault. "We stand with our backs to the 
wall," declared Field Marshal Haig, hope 
balancing against despair. And then 
America awoke to the desperate import of 
the struggle. The voice of the nation spoke 
and Germany heard. The boy of eighteen 
and the man of forty donned the olive drab. 
The farm, the shop, the office, the pulpit, the 
school, and the home gave up their best. 
Conscription with an impartial hand reached 
down into America's population and brought 
up men of every tribe, tongue, people, kin- 
dred, nation, creed, and stage of culture. 
The cantonment gathered the raw material; 
discipline ironed out its wrinkles; the rigors 
of camp life and bayonet drill hardened the 
flabby tissues into muscles of steel; patriot- 
ism inspired the courage ; and the vision of a 
triumphant blood-frenzied Germany reen- 
acting the horrors of Belgium in American 
homes galvanized and sanctified the purpose. 
Transports ferried the hosts of freedom 
through the forest of submarines, and the 
soil of tortured France welcomed at last the 
tread of the American Expeditionary Force! 

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THE MAN WHO DARES 

The Martial Climax 

Mankind will never forget the three hun- 
dred Spartans who held the pass of Ther- 
mopylae against the myrmidons of Xerxes; 
or Chalons-sm'-Marne, where the Roman 
legions crushed the savage dominion of At- 
tila the Hun ; or Tours, where Charles Mar- 
tel threw back the advancing hordes of Islam 
and saved western Europe to Christian civili- 
zation. It will never forget Quebec, where 
Wolfe won a continent for Anglo-Saxon 
ideals and institutions; or Waterloo, where 
the British squares shattered the Old Guard 
led by Marshal Xey, the ''bravest of the 
brave," and with it the last dream of Na- 
poleon's empire. It will never cease to ad- 
mire the splendid but futile daring of the 
Light Brigade, or the imperishable glory of 
Pickett's charge. Add to these deathless 
names Chateau Thierry, which rivals them 
all in its amazing, almost superhuman deeds 
of heroism, and admittedly surpasses them 
in the tremendous importance of the gigantic 
issues at stake and the immeasurable deliv- 
erance accomphshed. The battle of the Ar- 

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THE AMERICAN SOLDIER 

gonne, where Iron Cross and Red Cross met 
in desperate and final struggle for the body 
and soul of mankind, offers for the endless 
veneration of history in one magnificent epic 
the devotion of Thermopylae, the significance 
of Chalons and Tours, the audacity of 
Quebec, the dash and stubborn valor of 
Waterloo, and the spiritual regeneration of 
the field of Gettysburg. 

Many centuries ago a Christian apostle 
wrote, "This is the victory that overcometh 
the world, even our faith." It was preem- 
inently faith that won the World War — the 
moral conviction, implanted and invincible, 
that we were fighting for a righteous cause, 
and a righteous cause cannot be defeated. 
The dominant factor in German morale was 
faith in the superiority of their weapons. As 
soon as they lost confidence in their sub- 
marines and their batteries they went to 
pieces; while the Allies, who all along had 
believed implicitly in their ultimate victory, 
even in the dark and terrible reverses of the 
early days at Mons and Ypres, at last 
crashed through and over the Hindenberg 
line like a steamroller. 

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THE MAN WHO DARES 

Military and Naval Disgrace of 
Germany 

The collapse of Germany is the supreme 
anti-climax of all history. In June the Ger- 
man army, flushed and confident with the 
prestige of four years of victory, was within 
thirty-nine miles of the French capital; so 
near that Paris could feel in its face the hot 
breath of the approaching beast. In No- 
vember the German army, defeated, demor- 
alized, panic-stricken, was in full retreat, and 
the Kaiser a fugitive in Holland. Von 
Tirpitz shaved his whiskers and fled in dis- 
guise to Switzerland. Ludendorff escaped 
in civilian's clothes on a forged passport, and 
the mighty Hindenberg, taking no chances 
in bomb-proof dugout, sought safety in a 
personally conducted and ignominious 
flight. 

At Valley Forge Washington with his 
handful of indomitable patriots, hungry, 
naked, sick, defied the British army of in- 
vasion in Philadelphia. 

At Appomattox the gray immortals of 
Lee implored their great commander to make 

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THE AMERICAN SOLDIER 

a last desperate stand and let them die with 
their rifles in their hands. 

But the German army, with man power 
unimpaired, with rations in abundance and 
munitions mountain-high, turned tail and 
fled in terror from the iron spray of a trench 
shot-gun and sixteen inches of cold steel pro- 
pelled by Yankee will and muscle. 

At Trafalgar and Santiago the French 
and Spanish defied the hopeless odds against 
them and fought their ships to the end. And 
the end was glorious, worthy of the great 
people whose flag they bore. But the Ger- 
man fleet, whose blatant boastings had kept 
all Europe awake at nights for twenty years, 
couldn't be kicked into a fight when the 
crisis came. A line of ships twenty miles 
long surrendered without firing a shot. The 
German navy, which began its career with 
the murder of the innocents under the black 
flag of piracy, closed it in disgrace and 
cowardice under the red flag of anarchy. 

Equal Honor to All Who Wore the 
Uniform 

Public opinion recognizes, so far as the 
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THE MAN WHO DARES 

personal attitude of Americans toward the 
World War is concerned, but two classes — 
patriots and slackers. The patriots were the 
men and women who did all they could, 
whether much or little. The slackers were 
the men and women who did less than they 
could. That this war was supported at home 
as no other national war in our history was 
ever supported is the distinctive glory of the 
great army of civilian patriots who did all 
they could in the only way that was open to 
them. But all claims abate, all services pale, 
before the consecration, the fortitude, the 
heroism and sacrifice of the man who wore 
the uniform. It makes no difference where 
the chances of war may have placed him. 
Some were kept at inconspicuous posts of 
duty while their comrades found the front 
line trenches. Their patriotism and fighting 
blood are unimpeachable just the same. 
They were unfortunate in the distribution 
of opportunities, that is all. In this respect 
they are like the bull terrier that ambled 
down street attached to one end of a stout 
leash. The other end was held by a small 
boy, A man, struck by the businesslike as- 

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THE AMERICAN SOLDIER 

pect of the dog, stopped the boy and said to 
him, ''My, what a ferocious dog you have, 
sonny! He must have German blood in 
him." "No, he hasn't," said the boy, "but 
he would have if he could find a German." 

There were a million and a half men in 
uniform right here in the United States who 
were ready and eager to go to the front, who 
had prepared themselves for the final test, 
but to whom the opportunity never came. 
In Great Britain and France there were 
thousands more of Americans who never 
reached the fighting lines, denied the priv- 
ilege of participation in the closing scenes by 
only a few days. Thousands more of en- 
listed men and ofiicers there were who served 
at posts behind the lines which deprived them 
of the chance to prove their faith and valor. 
These men were all disappointed. They 
wanted to have a hand in smashing Germany 
in the way the veterans of Pershing's combat 
troops did. But though their contribution 
to final victory was not made in the manner 
of their cherished aspirations, what they did 
was no less essential, no less real. The fight 
could not have been won without them. 

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THE MAN WHO DARES 

Their labors, their spirit, their readiness, 
made ultimate victory possible, and he is a 
narrow-visioned American who fails to rec- 
ognize the debt the nation owes them or to 
accord them the unstinted praise they merit. 

"In every song there's a note of pain, 
A minor chord in each glad refrain." 

Blue Staks and Gold Stars 

While we greet in joyous welcome the 
living victors, we do not forget the ''unre- 
turning brave," nor miss the voiceless pathos 
of the American graves that hallow the hills 
and vales of France. We knew the stars 
upon our service flags could not all stay blue. 
Against the darker night of sorrow the gold 
stars flash their radiance upon a world made 
free through the sufferings of consecrated 
men. The great host living and dead, from 
the humblest private to the commanding gen- 
eral, are linked with God on his eternal 
throne. Blue stars and gold stars shall shine 
forever in the constellation of exalted spirits 
who labored and fought for the triumph of 
God's truth. 



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